Totto-Chan

the headmaster had been giving a class in eurythmics to some kindergarten teachers, and Totto-chan was very taken with the bloomers some of the women were wearing. What she liked about them was that when the women stamped their feet on the ground, their lower thighs showing beneath the bloomers rippled in such a lovely grown-up way. She ran home and got out her shorts and put them on and stamped on the floor. But her thin, childish thighs didn't ripple at all. After trying several times, she came to the conclusion it was because of what those ladies had been wearing. She asked what they were and Mother explained they were athletic bloomers. She told Mother she definitely wanted to wear bloomers on Sports Day, but they couldn't find any in a small size. That was why Totto-chan had to make do with shorts, which didn't produce any ripples, alas. Something amazing happened on Sports Day. Takahashi, who had the shortest arms and legs and was the smallest in the school, came first in everything. It was unbelievable. While the others were still creeping about inside the carp, Takahashi was through it in a flash, and while the others only had their heads through the ladder, he was already out of it and running several yards ahead. As for the Relay Race up the Assembly Hall steps, while the others were clumsily negotiating them a step at a time, Takahashi--his short legs moving like pistons --was up them in one spurt and down again like a speeded-up movie. \"We've got to try and beat Takahashi,\" they all said. Determined to beat him, the children did their utmost, but try as they might, Takahashi won every time. Totto-chan tried hard, too, but she never managed to beat Takahashi. They could outrun him in the straight stretches, but lost to him over the difficult bits. Takahashi went up to collect his prizes, looking happy and as proud as Punch. He was first in everything so he collected prize after prize. Everyone watched enviously. \"I’ll beat Takahashi next year!\" said each child to himself. But every year it was Takahashi who turned out to be the star athlete. Now the prizes, too, were typical of the head-master. First Prize might be a giant radish; Second Prize, two burdock roots; Third Prize, a bundle of spinach. Things like that. Until she was much older Totto-chan thought all schools gave vegetables for Sports Day prizes. In those days, most schools gave notebooks, pencils, and erasers for prizes. The Tomoe children didn't know that, but they weren't happy about the vegetables. Totto- chan, for instance, who got some burdock roots and some onions, was embarrassed about having to carry them on the train. Additional prizes were given for various things, so at the end of Sports Day all the children at Tomoe had some sort of vegetable. Now, why should children be embarrassed about going home from school with vegetables! No one minded being sent to buy vegetables by his mother, but they apparently felt it would look odd carrying vegetables home from school. A fat boy who won a cabbage didn't know what to do with it. \"I don't want to be seen carrying this,\" he said. \"I think I'll throw it away.” 50

The headmaster must have heard about their complaints for he went over to the children with their carrots and radishes and things. \"What's the matter? Don't you want them?\" he asked. Then he went on, \"Get your mothers to cool them for you for dinner tonight. They're vegetable you earned yourselves. You have provided food for your families by your own efforts. How's that? I’ll bet it tastes good!\" Of course, he was right. It was the first time in her life, for instance, that Totto-chan had ever provided anything for dinner. \"I'll get Mother to make spicy burdock!\" she told the headmaster. \"I haven't decided yet what to ask her to make with the onions.\" Whereupon the others all began thinking up menus, too, describing them to the headmaster. \"Good! So now you've got the idea,\" he said, smiling so happily his cheeks became quite flushed. He was probably thinking how nice it would be if the children and their families ate the vegetables while talking over the Sports Day events. No doubt he was thinking especially of Takahashi-whose dinner table would be overflowing with First Prizes-and hoping the boy would remember his pride and happiness at winning those First Prizes before developing an inferiority complex about his size and the fact he would never grow. And maybe, who knows, the headmaster had thought up those singularly Tomoe-type events just so Takahashi would come first in them. The Poet Issa The children liked to call the headmaster \"Issa Kobayashi.\" They even made up affectionate verses about him like the following: Issa Kobayashi! Issa's our Old Man With his bald head! That was because the headmaster's family name was Kobayashi, the same as that of the famous nineteenth-century poet Issa Kobayashi, whose haiku he loved. He quoted Issa's haiku so often, the children felt as if Issa Kobayashi was just as much their friend as Sosaku Kobayashi, their headmaster. The headmaster loved Issa's haiku because they were so true and dealt with the ordinary things in life. At a time when there must have been thousands of haiku poets, Issa created a world of his own that nobody was able to imitate. The headmaster admired his verses with their almost childlike simplicity. So at every opportunity, he would teach his pupils verses by Issa, which they would learn by heart, such as: Lean Frog, 51

Don't you surrender! Here's Issa by you. Fledgling Sparrows! Make way, make way, Way for the noble Horse! Spare the Fly! Wringing his hands, wringing his feet, He implores your mercy! The headmaster once improvised a melody for one, and they all sang it. Come and play with me Little Orphan Sparrows for mother less ye be . The headmaster often held haiku classes, although hey were not a formal part of the curriculum. Totto-chan's first effort at composing haiku described her favorite comic-strip character Norakuro, stray black dog who had joined the army as a private and gradually earned promotion in spite of he ups and downs in his career. It ran in a popular boy's magazine. Stray dog Black sets off For the Continent, now that He has been demobilized. The headmaster had said \"Try making up an honest, straight forward haiku about something that is in your thoughts.\" You couldn't call Totto-chan's a proper haiku. But it did show what sort of thing impressed her in those days. Her haiku didn't quite conform to the proper 5-7-5 syllable form. Hers was 5-7-7. But then, Issa's one about the fledgling sparrows in Japanese was 5-8-7, so Totto-chan thought it would be all right. During their walks to Kuhonbutsu Temple, or when it rained and they couldn't play outdoors but gathered in the Assembly Hall, Tomoe's Issa Kobayashi would tell the children about haiku. He also used haiku to illustrate his own thoughts about life and nature. 52

Some of Issa's haiku might have been written especially for Tomoe. The snow thaws-- And suddenly the whole village is full of children! Very Mysterious Totto-chan found some money for the first time in her life. It happened during the train ride going home from school. She got on the Oimachi train at Jiyugaoka. Before the train reached the next station, Midorigaoka, there was a sharp curve, and the train always leaned over with a great creaking. Totto-chan would brace herself with her feet so she wouldn't go \"Oops.\" She always stood by the right-hand door at the rear of the train, facing the way the train was going. She stood there because the platform at her own station was on the right-hand side and that door was nearest the exit. That day, as the train leaned over, creaking as usual as it went around the curve, Totto-chan noticed something that looked like money lying near her feet. She had picked up something once before that she thought was money but it turned out to be a button, so she thought she had better have a good look this time. When the train straightened out, she put her head right down and looked at it carefully. It was definitely money--a five-sen coin. She thought somebody nearby must have dropped it and it had come rolling toward her when the train leaned over. But nobody was standing anywhere near Totto-chan. What should she do, she wondered! Just then she remembered someone saying that when you found money, you should hand it to a policeman. But there wasn't a policeman on the train, was there? Just then, the conductor's compartment opened and the conductor entered the car in which Totto-chan was. Totto-chan herself didn't know what made her do it, but she put her right foot over the five-sen piece. The conductor knew her and smiled. But Totto-chan couldn't smile back whole heartedly because she felt guilty about what was under her right foot. All she could manage was a weak grin. At that moment the train stopped at Ookayama, the station before hers, and the doors on the left side opened. An unusual number of people got on and Totto-chan was pushed and jostled. Totto-chan had no intention of moving her right foot and desperately stood her ground. While doing so, she thought our her plan. When she got off the train she would take the money and hand it to a policeman. Then another thought occurred to her. If any grown-ups saw her pick up the coin from under her foot, they might think she was a thief! In those days you could buy a small packet of caramels or a bar of chocolate for five sen. So while if wouldn't seem like much of a sum to a grown-up, it was a large amount of money as far as Totto-chan was concerned, and she became quite worried about it. \"That's it!\" she said to herself \"I’ll say quietly, “Oh, I've dropped some money. I must pick it up. Then everyone's bound to think it's mine!\" But immediately another problem occurred to her, \"What if I say that and everyone looks at me and someone says, “That's mine!' What will I do?\" 53

After turning over lots of ideas in her mind, she decided the best thing to do would be to crouch down as the train neared her station, pretending to tie her shoelace, and pick up the money secretly. It worked. When she stepped onto the platform, damp with perspiration and clutching the five-sen piece, she felt exhausted. The police station was a long way off and if she went and handed in the money she would get home late and Mother would be worried. She thought hard as she clumped down the stairs, and this is what she decided to do. \"I’ll put it in a secret place, and then tomorrow I'll take it to school and ask everyone's advice. I ought to show it to them anyway, because nobody else has ever found any money. She wondered where to hide the money. If she took it home, Mother might ask about it, so it would have to be hidden somewhere else. She climbed into a thicket near the station. Nobody could see her there, and no one was likely to climb in, so it seemed pretty safe. She dug a tiny hole with a stick, dropped the precious five-sen coin into it, and covered it with earth. She found an oddly shaped stone and put it on top as a marker. Then she ran home at tremendous speed. Most nights Totto-chan would stay up talking about school until Mother announced, \"Time to go to bed.\" But that night, she didn't talk much and went to bed early. The following morning she awoke with the feeling there was something terribly important she had to do. Suddenly remembering her secret treasure, she was very happy. Leaving home earlier than usual, she raced Rocky to the thicket and scrambled in. “It's here! It's here!\" The stone marker was just as she had left it. \"I'll show you something lovely,\" she said to Rocky, removing the stone and digging carefully. But strangely enough, the five-sen coin had disappeared! She had never been so surprised. Did someone see her hide it, she wondered, or had the stone moved! She dug all around, but the five-sen piece Was nowhere to be found. She was very disappointed not to be able to show it to her friends at Tomoe, but more than that she couldn't get over the mysteriousness of it. Thereafter, every time she passed by she would climb into the thicket and dig, but never again did she see that five-sen piece. \"Perhaps a mole took it?\" she would think. Or, \"Did I dream it?\" Or, \"Maybe God saw me hide it.\" But no matter how much she thought about it, it was very strange, indeed. A very mysterious happening that she would never forget. 54

Talking with Your Hands One afternoon, near the ticket gate at Jiyugaoka Station, two boys and one girl slightly older than Totto-chan were standing together, looking as if they were playing \"stone, paper, scissors.\" But she noticed they were making a lot more signs with their fingers than usual. What fun it looked! She went closer so she could get g better view. They seemed to be holding a conversation without making a sound. One would make a lot of signs with his hands, then another who was watching would immediately make a lot more different signs. Then the third would do a few, and they would all burst out laughing, without making much sound. They seemed to be enjoying themselves. After watching them for some time, Totto-chan came to the conclusion they were talking with their hands. \"I wish I could talk with my hands, too,\" she thought enviously. She considered going over and joining them, but she didn't know how to ask them with her hands. And besides, they weren't Tomoe students, so it might be rude, so she just went on watching them until they left for the Toyoko train platform. \"Someday I'm going to learn how to talk to people with my hands,\" she decided. But Totto-chan didn't know yet about deaf people, or that those children went to the municipal deaf and dumb school in Oimachi, the last stop of the train she took to school each day. Totto-chan just thought there was something rather beautiful about the way those children watched each other's fingers with shining eyes, and she wanted to make friends with them someday. The Forty Seven Ronin While Mr. Kobayashi's system of education was unique, he had been influenced a great deal by ideas from Europe and other foreign countries, as we can see from Tomoe's eurythmics, its mealtime customs, its school walks, and the lunchtime song that was sung to the tune of \"Row, Row, Row Your Boat.\" The headmaster's right-hand man--at an ordinary school he would be the vice- principal--Mr. Maruyama, was in many ways the exact opposite of Mr. Kobayashi. Like his name, meaning \"round hill,\" his head was completely round, without a single hair on top, but with a fringe of white hair at the back at ear level. He wore round glasses, and his cheeks were bright red. He not only looked quite different from Mr. Kobayashi, but he used to recite classical Chinese-style poems in a solemn voice. On the morning of December fourteenth, when the children were all assembled at school, Mr. Maruyama made the following announcement: \"This is the day, nearly two and a half centuries ago, that the Forty-seven Ronin executed their famous vendetta. So we are going to walk to the temple of Sengakuji and pay our respects at their graves. Your parents have already been told.\" The headmaster did not oppose Mr. Maruyama's plan. What Mr. Kobayashi thought of it the parents didn't know, but they knew if he didn't oppose it, he must have 55

approved of it, and the prospect of Tomoe children visiting the tombs of the Forty- seven Ronin was indeed an intriguing one. Before they left, Mr. Maruyama told the children the story of the famous Forty- seven-how Lord Asano's brave and loyal men had plotted for almost two years to avenge the honor of their dead master, who had been so grievously wronged. Besides the Forty-seven there was a courageous merchant called Rihei Amanoya. It was he who supplied the weapons, and when he was arrested by the officials of the shogun he declared, \"I, Rihei Amanoya, am a man\" and refused to confess or give away a single secret. The children didn't understand much of the story, but they were excited about missing classes and going for a walk to a place much further away than Kuhonbutsu Temple--and a picnic lunch. Taking their leave of the headmaster and the other teachers all fifty, students started off, led by Mr. Maruyama. Here and there in the line children's voices could be heard declaiming, \"I, Rihei Amanoya, am a man.\" Girls declaimed it, too, causing passersby to nod their heads and laugh. It was about seven miles to Sengakuji, but motor vehicles were scarce, the December sky was blue, and, to the children strolling along firing a constant barrage of, \"I, Rihei Amanoya, am a man,\" the way did not seem long at all. When they got to Sengakuji, Mr. Maruyama gave each child a stick of incense and a few flowers. The temple was smaller than Kuhonbutsu, but there were lots of graves all in a row. The thought that this place was sacred to the memory of the Forty-seven Ronin made Totto-chan feel very solemn as she offered the incense and the flowers, and she bowed silently, imitating· Mr. Maruyama. A hush fell upon the children. It was unusual for Tomoe pupils to be so quiet. The smoke from the incense sticks placed before each tomb drifted up, drawing pictures in the sky for a long, long time. After that, the smell of incense always made the children think of Mr. Maruyama and of Rihei Amanoya. It also became for them the aroma of silence. The children may not have understood all about the Forty-seven Ronin, but for Mr. Maruyama, who spoke of these men with such fervor, the children felt almost as much respect and affection as for Mr. Kobayashi, although in a different way. Totto- chan loved his little eyes that peered from behind the thick lenses of his glasses, and his gentle voice that didn't seem to go with such a large body. “MaSOW-chaan!\" On her way to and from the station, Totto-chan used to pass a tenement where some Koreans lived. Totto-chan, of course, didn't know they were Koreans. The only thing she knew about them was that there was a woman there who wore her hair parted down the middle and drawn back into a bun, and who was rather plump and wore white rubber shoes that were pointed in front like little boats. She wore a dress with a long skirt and a ribbon tied in a big bow on the front of her short blouse, and always seemed to be looking for her son, calling out. \"MaSOW-chaan!\" She was always calling his name. And instead of pronouncing it \"Ma-sa-o-chan,\" as people normally would, she stressed the second syllable and drew out the \"chan\" in a high-pitched voice that sounded sad to Totto-chan. 56

The tenement was right beside the Oimachi train necks on a small embankment. Totto-chan knew who Masao-chan was. He was a little bigger than she was and probably in second grade, although she didn't know which school he went to. He had untidy hair and always had a dog with him. One day, as Totto-chan was walking home post the embankment, Masao-chan was standing on top of it with his feet apart and his hands on his hips, in an arrogant posture. \"Korean!\" he shouted at Totto-chan. His voice was scathing and full of hatred. Totto-chan was scared. She had never done anything mean to him, or even spoken to him for that matter, so she was startled when he yelled at her from above in such a spiteful way. When she got home she told Mother about it. \"Masao-chan called me a Korean,\" she said. Mother put her hand to her mouth and Totto-chan saw her eyes fill with mars. Totto-chan was perplexed, thinking it must be something very bad. Mother didn't stop to wipe away her tears, and the tip of her nose was red. \"poor child!\" she said. \"People must call him 'Korean! Korean!' so ofmn that he thinks it's a nasty word. He probably doesn't understand what it means because he's still young. He thinks it's like baka, which people say when they mean 'you fool.' Masao-chan has probably had 'Korean' said to him so often he wanted to say something nasty to somebody else, so he called you a Korean. Why are people so cruel?” Drying her eye, Mother said to Totto-chan very slowly, \"You're Japanese and Masao- chan comes from a country called Korea. But he's a child, just like you. So, Totto- chan dear, don't ever think of people as different. Don't think, 'That person's a Japanese, or this person's a Korean.' Be nice to Masao-chan. It's so sad that some people think other people aren't nice just because they're Koreans.\" It was all rather difficult for Totto-chan to understand, but what she did understand was that Masao-chan was a little boy whom people spoke ill of for no reason at all. That must be why his mother was always searching for him so anxiously, she thought. So next morning, as she passed the embankment and heard his mother calling out, \"MaSOW-chaan\" in her shrill voice, she wondered where he could be, and made up her mind that even though she herself wasn't a Korean, if Masao-chan called her that again, she would reply, \"We're all children! We're all the same,\" and she'd try to make friends with him. Masao-chan's mother's voice, with its combination of irritation and anxiety, had a special quality of its own that seemed to linger in the air for a long time, until it was drowned by the sound of a passing train. \"MaSOW-chaan!\" Once you heard the sad, tearful sound of that voice you could never forget it. Pigtails About that time, Totto-chan had two great ambitions. One was to wear athletic bloomers, and the other was to braid her hair. Watching older school-girls with long braids in the train, she decided she wanted to wear her hair that way, too. While the 57

rest of the little girls in her class wore their hair short, with bangs, Totto-chan wore hers longer, parted at the side and tied with a ribbon. Mother liked it that way, and besides, Totto-chan wanted it to grow so she could wear pigtails. Finally, one day she got Mother to braid her hair into two little pigtails. With the ends secured by rubber bands and tied with slender ribbons, she felt like an older student. When she looked at herself in the mirror, she realized that, unlike the girls in the train, her braids were thin and short and really looked like pigs' tails, but she ran to Rocky and held them up proudly for him to see. Rocky blinked once or twice. \"I wish I could braid your hair, too,\" she said. When she got on the train she held her head as still as she could for fear the braids might come undone. \"How nice it would be,\" she thought, \"if someone noticed them on the train and said, 'What lovely braids!' \" But nobody did. When she got to school, however, Miyo-chan, Sakko-chan, and Keiko Aoki, who were all in her class, exclaimed in unison, \"Oooh! Pigtails!\" and she was awfully pleased and let the girls feel them. None of the boys seemed impressed. But all of a sudden, after lunch, a boy from her class named Oe said in a loud voice, “Wow! Totto-chan's got a new hairdo!\" Totto-chan was thrilled to think one of the boys had noticed, and said proudly, \"They're pigtails.\" Whereupon he came over, took hold of them with both hands, and said, \"I'm tired. I think I'll hang onto them for a while. Gee, they're much nicer than the hand snaps on the train!\" But that wasn't the end of her trouble. Oe was twice as big as skinny little Totto-chan. In face, he was the biggest and fattest boy in the class. So when he pulled on her pigtails she staggered and fell smack on her bottom. To have them called hand scraps was hurtful enough, without being dragged to the ground as well. But when Oe tried to pull her up by her pigtails, with a \"Heave-ho, heave-ho!\" just like at the Sports Day Tug of War, Totto-chan burst into tears. To Totto-chan, pigtails were the emblem of an older girl. She had expected everyone to be very polite to her because of them. Crying, she ran to the headmaster's office. When he heard her knocking on the door, sobbing, he opened it, and bent down as usual so their faces were level. \"What's the matter?\" he asked. After checking to see if her pigtails were still properly braided, she said, \"Oe pulled them, saying, 'Heave-ho, heave-ho.' \" The headmaster looked at her hair. In contrast to her tearful face, her little pigtails looked as if they were dancing gaily. He sat down and had Totto-chan sit down, too, facing him. As usual, heedless of his missing teeth, he grinned. \"Don't cry,\" he said. \"Your hair looks lovely. 58

\"Do you like it?\" she asked, rather shyly, raising her tear-stained face. \"It's terrific!\" he said. Totto-chan stopped crying, and got down from her chair saying, “I won’t cry any more even if Oe says 'Heave-ho.' \" The headmaster nodded approval with a grin. Totto-chan smiled, too. Her smiling face suited her pigtails. Bowing to the headmaster, she ran back and began playing with the other children. She had almost forgotten about having cried when she saw Oe standing in front of her, scratching his head. \"I'm sorry I pulled them,\" he said in a loud, flat voice. \"I've been scolded by the headmaster. He said you've got to be nice to girls. He said to be gentle with girls and look after them.\" Totto-chan was somewhat amazed. She had never heard anyone before say you had to be nice to girls. Boys were always the important ones. In the families she knew where there were lots of children,-it was always the boys who were served first at meals and at snack time, and when girls spoke, their mothers would say, \"Little girls should be seen and not heard.\" In spite of all that, the headmaster had told Oe that girls should be looked after. It seemed strange to Totto-chan. And then she thought how nice that was. It was nice to be looked after. As for Oe, it was a shock. Fancy being told to be gentle and nice to girls! Moreover, it was the first and last time at Tomoe that he was ever scolded by the headmaster, and he never forgot that day. “Thank You\" New Year's vacation drew near. Unlike summer vacation, the children didn't gather at school at all but spent the whole time with their families. \"I'm going to spend New Year's with my grandfather in Kyushu,\" Migita kept telling everyone, while Tai-chan, who liked doing science experiments, said, \"I'm going with my older brother to visit a physics laboratory.\" He was looking forward to it. “Well, I’ll be seeing you,\" each said, telling one another their plans as they parted company. Totto-chan went skiing with Daddy and Mother. Daddy's friend Hideo Saito, the cellist and conductor in the same orchestra, had a beautiful house in the Shiga Highlands. They used to stay with him there every winter, and Totto-chan had started learning how to ski from the time she was in kindergarten. You took a horse-drawn sleigh from the station to the skiing area--a pure white snowscape, unbroken by ski lifts or anything but the stumps of trees here and there. 59

For people who didn't have a house like Mr. Saito's to go to, Mother said there was only one Japanese-style inn and one Western-style hotel. But, interestingly lots of foreigners went there. For Totto-chan, this year was different from the year before. She was now a first grade pupil at elementary school, and also she knew one bit of English. Daddy had taught her how to say, \"Thank you.\" Foreigners who passed Totto-chan standing on the snow in her skis always used to say something. It was probably, \"Isn't she sweet,\" or something like that, but Totto- chan didn't understand. And until this year she hadn't been able to reply, but from now on She tried bobbing her head and saying, \"Thank you.\" That made the foreigners smile even more and say something to each other. Sometimes a lady would bend down and put her cheek against Totto-chan's cheek, or a gentleman would hug her. Totto-chan thought it was great fun to be able to make such good friends with people just by saying, \"Thank you.\" One day a nice young man came over to Totto-chan and gestured as much as to say, “Would you like a ride on the front of my skis?\" Daddy told her she could. \"Thank you,\" replied Totto-chan, and the man had her sit down by his feet on his skis with her knees drawn up. Then, keeping both his skis together, he skied with Totto- chan down the gentlest and longest slope at Shiga Highlands. They went like the wind, and as the air rushed past her ears it made a whistling sound. Totto-chan hugged her knees tightly taking care not to fall forward. It was a bit scary, but tremendous fun. When they came to a halt, the people who were watching clapped. Getting up from the man's skis, Totto-chan bowed her head slightly to the onlookers, and said, \"Thank you.\" They clapped all the more. Much later on she learned that the man's name was Schneider, and that he was a world-famous skier, who always used a pair of silver ski poles. But that day, what she liked about him was that after they had skied down the slope, and everybody had clapped, he crouched down beside her and, taking her hand, he looked at her as if she was somebody important and said, \"Thank you.\" He didn't treat her like a child, but like a real grown-up lady. When he bent down, Totto-chan knew in her heart, instinctively, that he was a gentleman. And beyond him, the snow-white landscape seemed to go on forever. The Library Car When the children returned to school after the winter vacation, they discovered something wonderful and new, and greeted their discovery with shouts of joy. Opposite the row of classroom cars stood the new car, beside the flower bed by the Assembly Hall. In their absence it had become a library! Ryo-chan, the janitor, whom everyone respected and who could do all sorts of things, had obviously been working terribly hard. He had put up lots and lots of shelves in the car, and they were filled with rows of books of all kinds and colors. There were desks and chairs, too, where you could sit and read. 60

\"This is your library,\" the headmaster said. \"Any of these books may be read by anyone. You needn't fear that some books are reserved for certain grades, or anything like that. You can come in here any time you like. If you want to borrow a book and take it home, you may. When you've read it, be sure and bring it back! And if you've got any books at home you think the others would like to read, I'd be delighted if you'd bring them here. At any rate, please do as much reading as you can!\" \"Let's make the first class today a library class!\" cried the children, unanimously. \"Is that what you'd like to do?\" said the head-master, smiling happily to see them so excited. \"All right, then, why not?\" Whereupon, the whole student body of Tomoe--all fifty children--piled into the library car. With great excitement they picked our books they wanted and tried to sit down, but only about half of them could find seats and the rest had to stand. It looked exactly like a crowded train, with people reading books standing up. It was quite a funny sight. The children were overjoyed. Totto-chan couldn't read too well yet, so she chose a book with a picture in it that looked most entertaining. When everyone had a book in hand and started turning the pages, the car suddenly became quiet. But not for long. The silence was soon broken by a jumble of voices. Some were reading passages aloud, some were asking others the meaning of characters they didn't know, and some wanted to swap books. Laughter filled the train. One child had just started on a book called Singing Pictures and was drawing a face while reading out the accompanying jingle in a loud singsong: A circle and a spot; a circle and a spot; Criss-crosses for the nose; another round and dot. Three hairs, three hairs, three hairs--and wow! Quick as a wink, there's a fat hausfrau. The face had to be encircled on the word \"wow, and the three semicircles drawn as you sang \"Quick as a wink.\" If you made all the right strokes, the result was the face of a plump woman with an old-fashioned Japanese hairdo. At Tomoe, where the children were allowed to work on their subjects in any order they pleased, it would have been awkward if the children let themselves be disturbed by what others were doing. They were trained to concentrate no matter what was going on around them. So nobody paid any attention to the child singing aloud while drawing the hausfrau. One or two had joined in, but all the others were absorbed in their books. Totto-chan's book seemed to be a folk tale. It was about a rich man's daughter who couldn't get a husband because she was always breaking wind. Finally her parents managed to find a husband for her, but She was so excited on her wedding night that she let out a much bigger one than ever before, and the wind blew her bridegroom out of bed, spun him around the bedroom seven and a half rimes, and knocked him 61

unconscious. The picture that had looked so entertaining showed him flying through the room. Afterward, that book was always in great demand. All the students of the school, packed into the train like sardines, devouring the books so eagerly in the morning sunlight that was pouring through the windows, must have presented a sight that gladdened the heart of the headmaster. The children spent the whole of that day in the library car. After that, when they couldn't be outdoors because of rain, and at many other times, the library became a favorite gathering place for them. \"I think I'd better have a bathroom built neat the library,\" said the headmaster one day. That was because the children would become so absorbed in their books that they were always holding out until the very last minute before making a dash for the toilet beyond the Assembly Hall, holding themselves in strange contortions. Tails One afternoon, when school was over and Totto-chan was preparing to go home, Oe came running to her and whispered, \"The headmaster's mad at somebody.\" . \"Where?\" asked Totto-chan. She had never heard of the headmaster getting angry and was amazed. Oe was obviously amazed, too, the way he had come running in such a hurry to tell her. \"They're in the kitchen,\" said Oe, his good-natured eyes opened wide and his nostrils a little dilated. \"Come on!\" Totto-chan took Oe's hand and they both raced toward the headmaster's house. It adjoined the Assembly Hall, and the kitchen was right by the back entrance to the school grounds. The time Totto-chan fell into the cesspool she was taken through the kitchen to the bathroom to be scrubbed clean. And it was in the headmaster's kitchen that \"something from the ocean and something from the hills\" were made to be doled out at lunchtime. As the two children tiptoed toward the kitchen, they heard the angry voice of the headmaster through the closed door. \"What made you say so thoughtlessly to Takahashi that he had a tail?\" It was their homeroom teacher who was being reprimanded. \"I didn't mean it seriously,\" they heard her reply. \"I just happened to notice him at that moment, and he looked so cute.\" 62

\"But can't you see the seriousness of what you said? What can I do to make you understand the care I take with regard to Takahashi?\" Totto-chan remembered what happened in class that morning. The homeroom teacher had been telling them about human beings originally having tails. The children had thought it great fun. Grown-ups would have probably called her talk an introduction to the theory of evolution, it appealed to the children greatly. And when the teacher told them everybody had the vestige of a tail called the coccyx, each child started wondering where his was, and soon the classroom was in an uproar. Finally the teacher had said jokingly, \"Maybe somebody here still has a tail! What about you, Takahashi!\" Takahashi had quickly stood up, shaking his head emphatically, and said in deadly earnest, \"I haven't got one.\" Totto-chan realized that was what the headmaster was talking about. His voice had now become more sad than angry. \"Did it occur to you to think how Takahashi might feel if he was asked if he had a tail?\" The children couldn't hear the teacher's reply. Totto-chan didn't understand why the headmaster was so angry about the tail. She would have loved being asked by the headmaster if she had a tail. Of course, she had nothing wrong with her, so she wouldn't have minded such a question. But Takahashi had stopped growing, and he knew it. That was why the headmaster had thought up events for Sports Day in which Takahashi would do well. He had them swim in the pool without swimsuits so children like Takahashi would lose their self consciousness. He did all he could to help children with physical handicaps, like Takahashi and Yasuaki-chan, lose any complexes they might have and the feeling they were inferior to other children. It was beyond the headmaster's comprehension how anyone could be so thoughtless as to ask Takahashi, just because he looked cute, whether he had a tail. The headmaster happened to be visiting that class, standing in the back of the classroom, when she said it. Totto-chan could hear the homeroom teacher crying. \"It was terribly wrong of me,\" she sobbed. \"What can I do to apologize to Takahashi?\" The headmaster said nothing. Totto-chan couldn't see him through the glass door, but she wanted so much to be with him. She didn't know what it was all about, but somehow she felt more than ever that he was their friend. One must have felt that way, too. Totto-chan never forgot how the headmaster had reprimanded their homeroom teacher in his kitchen and not in the faculty room, where the other teachers were. It showed he was an educator in the very best sense of the word, although Totto-chan did not realize that at the time. The sound of his voice and his words remained in her heart forever. 63

It was almost spring, Totto-chan's second spring at Tomoe, and the beginning of a new school year. Her Second Year at Tomoe Tender green leaves were sprouting on all the trees in the school grounds, and the flowers in the flower beds were busy blossoming. Crocuses, daffodils, and pansies popped out their heads in Nm to say, \"How do you do?\" to the pupils of Tomoe, and the tulips lengthened their stalks as if stretching themselves. Cherry buds trembled in the soft breeze, all set and ready, waiting for the signal to burst into bloom. The black popeyes, followed by the rest of the goldfish that lived in the small square concrete foot-rinsing basin by the swimming pool, shook themselves and started to swim about happily. There was no need to say, \"It's spring,\" for the season when everything looks shining and fresh and lively needed no announcement. Everyone knew it was spring! If was exactly a year since the morning Totto-chan first arrived at Tomoe Gakuen with Mother. She was so surprised to find a Bate growing out of the ground, and so excited to see classrooms in a train, that she jumped up and down, and so certain that Sosaku Kobayashi, the headmaster, was her friend. Now Totto-chan and her classmates rejoiced in their new status as second graders while in came the new first grade children looking all around curiously just as Totto-chan and her classmates had done. It had been an eventful year for Totto-chan, and she had eagerly looked forward to every single morning of it. She still liked street musicians, but she had learned to like many, many more things around her. The little girl who had been expelled for being a nuisance had grown into a child worthy of Tomoe. Some parents had misgivings about Tomoe's education. There were times when even Totto-chan's Mother and Daddy wondered if they had done the right thing. Among parents who regarded Mr. Kobayashi's educational system dubiously and judged it superficially, just by what they saw, were some who became so alarmed about leaving their children at his school that they arranged to transfer them elsewhere. But the children themselves did not want to leave Tomoe, and cried. Fortunately, no one was leaving in Totto-chan's class, but a boy one grade above had rears streaming down his cheeks as he vented his despair by pounding on the head-master's back with clenched fists, the scab from a grazed knee flapping all the while. The headmaster's eyes were red from crying, too. The lad was finally led away from the school by his mother and father. As he went, he kept on turning around and waving, time after time. But there were not many sad occasions like that, and Totto-chan was now a second grader, with the expectation of more daily surprises and delight. By this time Totto-chan's schoolbag was well acquainted with her back. Swan Lake 64

Totto-chan was taken to Hibiya Hall to see the ballet Swan Lake. Daddy was playing the violin solo and a very fine troupe was performing. It was the first time she had ever been to a ballet. The queen of the swans wore a tiny sparkling crown on her head and leaped through the air effortlessly, like a real swan. Or so it seemed to Totto-chan. The prince fell in love with the Swan queen and spurned all others. Finally, the two of them danced together so tenderly. The music, too, made a great impression on Totto-chan, and after she got home she couldn't stop thinking about it. Next day, when she woke up, she went straight down to the kitchen where Mother was, without even brushing her hair, and announced, \"I don't want to be a spy any more, or a street musician, or a ticket seller. I'm going to be a ballerina and dance in Swan Lake!\" \"Oh,\" said Mother. She didn't seem surprised. It was the first rime Totto-chan had ever seen a ballet, but she had heard a great deal from the head-master about Isadora Duncan, an American lady who danced beautifully. Like Mr. Kobayashi, Isadora Duncan had been influenced by Dalcroze. If the headmaster She admired so much liked Isadora Duncan, that was enough for Totto-chan, and although she had never seen her dance, she felt as if she knew her. So to be a dancer didn't seem anything out of the ordinary to Totto-chan. It so happened that a friend of Mr. Kobayashi's who came and taught eurythmics at Tomoe had a dance studio nearby. Mother arranged for Totto-chan to take lessons at his studio after school. Mother never told Totto-chan that she must do this or must do that but when Totto-chan wanted to do something, she would agree, and, without asking all sorts of questions, she would go ahead and make the arrangements. Totto-chan began taking lessons at the studio, longing for the day when she would be able to dance Swan Lake. But the teacher had his own special method. Besides the eurythmics they did at Tomoe, he would have the pupils amble about to piano or phonograph music, repeating to themselves some such phrase as \"Shine upon the mountain!\" from the prayer \"Cleanse my soul; Oh, shine upon the mountain!\" chanted by pilgrims as they climb Mount Fuji. Suddenly the teacher would exclaim, \"Pose!\" and the pupils would have to assume some pose they devised themselves and stand still. The teacher would pose, too, with some emotive cry like \"Aach!\" and assume a \"looking up to heaven\" pose or sometimes that of \"a person in agony, crouching down and holding his head with both hands. The image Totto-chan cherished in her mind, however, was that of a swan wearing a sparkling crown and a frilly white costume. It was not \"Shine upon the mountain!\" or \"Aach!\" One day Totto-chan plucked up courage and went over to the teacher. Although he was a man, he had curly hair and bangs. Totto-chan stretched her arms out and fluttered them like the wings of a swan. \"Aren't we ever going to do anything like this!\" she asked. The teacher was a handsome man with large round eyes and an aquiline nose. \"We don't do that kind of dancing here,\" he said. 65

After that Totto-chan stopped going to his studio. True, she liked leaping about in bare feet, not wearing ballet shoes, and striking poses she thought up herself. But, after all, she did so want to wear one of those tiny, glittering crowns! \"Swan Lake is nice,\" said the teacher, \"but I wish I could get you to like just dancing according to you fancy. It wasn't until years later that Totto-chan found out that his name was Baku Ishii and that he not only introduced free ballet to Japan but also gave the name Jiyugaoka (\"freedom hill”) to the area. In addition to all that--he was fifty at the time--this man tried to teach Totto-chan the joy of dancing freely. The Farming Teacher \"This is your teacher today. He's going to show you all sorts of things.\" With that the headmaster introduced a new teacher. Totto-chan took a good look at him. In the first place, he wasn't dressed like a teacher at all. He wore a short striped cotton work jacket over his undershirt, and instead of a necktie, he had a towel hanging around his neck. As for his trousers, they were of indigo-dyed cotton with narrow legs, and were full of patches. Instead of shoes, he wore workmen's thick two-toed, rubber- soled socks, while on his head was a rather dilapidated straw hat. The children were all assembled by the, pond at Kuhonbutsu Temple. As she stared at the teacher, Totto-chan thought she had seen him before. \"Where!\" she wondered. His kindly face was sun burnt and full of wrinkles. Even the slender pipe dangling from a black cord around his waist that served as a belt looked familiar. She suddenly remembered! \"Aren't you the farmer who works in the field by the stream!\" she asked him, delighted. \"That's right,\" said the \"teacher, with a toothy smile, wrinkling up his face. \"You pass my place ev’ry time you go fer yer walks to Kuhonbutsu! That's my field. That one over there full o' mustard blossoms.\" \"Wow! So you're going to be our teacher today, cried the children excitedly. \"Naw!\" said the man, waving his hand in front of his face. “I ain't no teacher! I'm just a farmer. Your headmaster just asked me to do it, that's all.\" \"Oh yes, he is. He's your farming teacher,\" said the headmaster, standing beside him. \"He very kindly agreed to teach you how to plant a field. It's like having a baker teach you how to make bread. Now then,\" he said to the farmer, \"tell the children what to do, and let's get started.\" At an ordinary elementary school, anyone who taught the children anything would probably have to have teaching qualifications, bur Mr. Kobayashi didn't worry about things like that. He thought it important for children to learn by actually seeing things done. 66

\"Let's begin then,\" said the farming teacher. The place where they were assembled was besides the Kuhonbutsu pond and it was a particularly quiet section--a pleasant place, where the pond was shaded by trees. The headmaster had already had part of a railroad car put there for storing the children's farming implements, such as spades and hoes. The half-car had a peaceful look, neatly placed as it was right in the middle of the plot they were going to cultivate. The farming teacher told the children to spades and hoes from the car and started them on weeding. He told them all about weeds: how hardy they were; how some grew faster than crops and hid the sun from them; how weeds were good hiding places for bad insects; and how weeds could be a nuisance by taking all the nourishment from the soil. He taught them one thing after another. And while he talked, his hands never stopped pulling out weeds. The children did the same. Then the teacher showed them how to hoe; how to make furrows; how to spread fertilizer; and everything else you had to do to grow things in a field, explaining as he demonstrated. A little snake put its head out and very nearly bit the hand of Ta-chan, one of the older boys, but the farming teacher reassured him, \"The snakes here ain't poisonous, and they won't hurt you if you don't hurt them.\" Besides teaching the children how to plant a field, the farming teacher told them interesting things about insects, birds, and butterflies, about the weather, and about all sorts of other things. His strong gnarled hands seemed to attest that everything he told the children, he had found out himself through experience. The children were dripping with perspiration when they had finally finished planting the field with the teacher's help. Except for a few furrows that were a bit uneven, it was an impeccable field, whichever way you looked at it. From that day onward, the children held that farmer in high esteem, and whenever they saw him, even at a distance, they would cry, \"There's our farming teacher!\" Whenever he had any fertilizer left he would bring it over and spread it on the children's field, and their crops grew well. Every day someone would visit the field and report to the head-master and the other children on how it was doing. The children learned to know the wonder and the joy of seeing the seeds they had planted themselves sprout. And whenever two or three of them were gathered together, talk would turn to the progress of their field. Terrible things were beginning to happen in various parts of the world. But as the children discussed their tiny field - they were still enfolded in the very heart of peace. Field Kitchen One day, after school Was over, Totto-chan went out the gate without speaking to anyone or even saying goodbye and hurried to Jiyugaoka Station, muttering to herself over and over, \"Thunder canyon field kitchen, thunder canyon field kitchen...” 67

It was a difficult phrase for a little girl, but no worse than the name of that man in the comic rakugo tale whose name took so long to say he drowned in the well before his rescuers knew who he was. Totto-chan had to concentrate hard on the phrase, however, and if anyone nearby had suddenly started saying that famous long name that began, “Jugemu-Jugemu,\" she would have forgotten the phrase straight away. Even if she said, \"Here we go,\" as she jumped over a puddle, she would be bound to get it muddled, so she could do nothing but keep on repeating it to herself. Thankfully, nobody tried to speak to her in the train and she tried not to discover anything interesting, so she managed to reach her station without even a single \"What was that!\" But as she was leaving the station, a man she recognized who worked there said, \"Hello, back already?\" and she was on the point of replying but stopped herself, knowing it would mix her up, so she just waved to him and ran home. The moment she reached the front door, she shouted to Mother at the top of her voice, \"Thunder canyon field kitchen!\" At first Mother wondered if it was a judo yell or a rallying cry of the Forty-seven Ronin. Then it clicked. Near Todoroki Station, three stops beyond Jiyugaoka, there was a famous beauty spot called Todoroki Keikoku, or Thunder Canyon. It was one Of the most celebrated places of old Tokyo. It had a waterfall, a stream, and beautiful woods. As for field kitchen-that must mean the children were going to have a cookout there. What a difficult phrase to teach children, she marveled. But it proved how easily children learn once their interest is aroused. Grateful to be released at last from the difficult phrase, Totto-chan gave Mother all the relevant details, one after the other. The children were to assemble at the school the following Friday morning. The things they had to bring were a soup bowl, a rice bowl, chopsticks, and one cup of uncooked rice. The headmaster said it became two bowlfuls when cooked, she remembered to add. They were going to make pork soup, too, so she needed some pork and vegetables. And they could bring something for an afternoon snack if they wanted. The next few days Totto-chan stuck close to Mother in the kitchen and carefully observed how she used a knife, how she held a pot, and how she served the rice. It was nice watching her work in the kitchen, bur what Totto-chan liked most was the way Mother would say, \"Ooh, that's hot!\" and quickly put her thumb and index finger to her ear-lobe whenever she picked up something hot like a lid. \"That's because earlobes are cold,\" Mother explained. Her gesture impressed Totto-chan as being very grown-up and evidence of kitchen expertise. She said to herself, \"When we thunder-canyon-field-kitchen, I'm going to do that, too!\" Friday finally arrived. When they had reached Thunder Canyon after leaving the train, the head-master surveyed the children gathered in the woods. Their dear little faces glowed in the sunlight as it filtered through the tall trees. With their knapsacks bulging, the children waited to hear what the head-master had to say, while beyond them the famous waterfall fell in booming torrents, making a beautiful rhythm. 68

\"Now then,\" said the headmaster, \"first of all, let's divide into groups and make stoves with the bricks the teachers have brought. Then some of you can wash the rice in the stream and put it on to cook. After that, we'll start making the pork soup. Now then, shall we get started?\" The children divided themselves into groups by playing \"stone, paper, scissors.\" Since there were only about fifty of them, it wasn't long before they had six groups. Holes were dug and surrounded with piled-up bricks. Then they laid thin iron bars across to support the soup and rice pots. While that was going on, some gathered firewood in the forest, and others went off to wash the rice in the stream. The children themselves allotted their various tasks. Totto-chan offered to cut up the vegetables and take charge of the pork soup. A boy two years senior to Totto-chan was also assigned to chopping vegetables, but he cut them into pieces that were either too big or too small and made a mess of the job. He labored manfully with the task, however, his nose glistening with perspiration. Totto-chan followed Mother's example and skillfully cut up the egg-plants, potatoes, onions, burdock roots, and so forth, that the children had brought, in just the right bite-sized pieces. She even took it upon herself to make some pickles by slicing egg plant and cucumber very thin and rubbing the slices with salt. She gave advice, too, to some of the older children who were having trouble with their chores. Totto-chan really felt as if she had already become a mother! Everyone was impressed with her pickles. \"Oh, I just thought I'd try and see if I could make some,\" she declared modestly. When it came to flavoring the pork broth, everyone was asked for an opinion. From the various groups came startled cries of, \"Wow!\" \"Gee!\" and a great deal of laughter. The birds in the forest twittered, too, joining in the general uproar. In the meantime, tempting aromas rose from every pot. Until then, hardly any of the children had ever watched something cooking or had to regulate the heat. They had merely eaten what was put before them on the table. The joy of cooking something themselves, with its attendant traumas--and seeing the various changes the ingredients have to undergo--was a whole new experience to them. Eventually, the work at each group's makeshift stove was completed. The headmaster had the children make a space on the grass where they could all sit in a circle. One soup pot and one rice pot were placed in front of each group. But Totto-chan refused to have her group's soup pot taken away until she had first performed the action she had set her heart upon. Taking off the hot lid, she declared rather self-consciously, \"Ooh, that's hot!\" and put the fingers of both hands to her earlobes. Only then did she say, \"You can take it now,\" and the pot was duly carried over to where the children were sitting, wondering what on earth was going on. No one seemed at all impressed. But Totto-chan was satisfied all the same. Everyone's attention was fixed on the bowls of rice in front of them and the contents of the steaming soup bowls. The children were hungry. But first and foremost, it was a meal they had made themselves! After the children had sung, \"Chew, chew, chew it well, Everything you eat,\" and had said, \"I gratefully partake,\" all became quiet in the woods. There was no sound but that of the waterfall. 69

“You're Really a Good Girl” “You're really a good girl, you know.” That's what the headmaster used to say every time he saw Totto-chan. And every time he said it, Totto-chan would smile, give a little skip, and say, \"Yes, I am a good girl.\" And she believed it. Totto-chan was, indeed, a good girl in many ways. She was kind to everyone - particularly her physically handicapped friends. She would defend them, and, if children from other schools said cruel things, she would fight the tormentors, even if it ended with her crying. She would do everything to care for any injured animals she found. But at the same time her teachers were continually astonished at the amount of trouble she always got into as she tried to satisfy her curiosity whenever she discovered anything unusual. She would do things like making her pigtails stick out behind under each arm while marching to morning assembly. Once, when it was her turn to sweep the classroom, she opened a trapdoor her sharp eyes had noticed in the floor and put all the sweepings down the hole. It had originally been for inspecting the machinery when it was a real train. But she couldn't get the trapdoor closed again, and caused everyone a lot of trouble. And then there was the time someone told her how meat was hung up on hooks, so she went and hung by one arm from the highest exercise bar. She hung there for ages, and when a teacher saw her and asked what she was doing, she shouted, \"I'm a piece of meat today!\" and just then lost her hold and fell down so hard it knocked all the wind out of her lungs and she couldn't speak all day. Then, of course, there was that time when she jumped into the cesspool. She was always doing things like that and hurting herself, but the headmaster never sent for Mother and Daddy. It was the same with the other children. Matters were always settled between the headmaster and the child concerned. lust as he had listened to Totto-chan for four hours the day she first arrived at the school, he always listened to what a child had to say about an incident caused. He even listened to their excuses. And if the child had done something really bad and eventually recognized it was wrong, the headmaster would say, \"Now apologize.\" In Totto-chan's case, complaints and fears voiced by children's parents and other teachers undoubtedly reached the ears of the headmaster. That's why, whenever he had a chance, he would say to Totto-chan, \"You're really a good girl, you know. A grown-up, hearing him say it, would have realized the significance of the way he emphasized the word “really.” What the headmaster must have wanted to make Totto-chan understand was something like this: \"Some people may think you're not a good girl in many respects, but your real character is not bad. It has a great deal that is good about it, and I am well aware of that.\" Alas, it was many, many years before Totto-chan realized what he really meant. Still, while she may not have grasped his true meaning at the time, the headmaster certainly instilled, deep in her, a confidence in herself as “a good girl.” His words echoed in her heart even when she was engaged in some escapade. And many times she said to herself, \"Good heavens!\" as she reflected on something she had done. 70

Mr. Kobayashi kept on repeating, the entire time she was at Tomoe, those important words that probably determined the course of her whole life: “Totto-chan, you're really a good girl, you know.” His Bride Totto-chan was very sad. She was in third grade now and she liked Tai-chan a lot. He was clever and good at physics. He studied English, and it was he who taught her the English word for fox. \"Totto-chan,\" he had Said, \"do yoU know what the English word for kitsune is? It's 'fox.' \" \"Fox.\" Totto-chan had luxuriated in the sound of that word all day long. After that, the first thing she always did when she got to the classroom-in-the train was to sharpen all the pencils in Tai-chan's pencil box as beautifully as she could with her penknife. She didn't bother about her own, which she just hacked at with her teeth. In spite of all that, Tai-chan had spoken roughly to her. It happened during lunch break. Totto-chan was sauntering along behind the Assembly Hall in the region of chat notorious cesspool. \"Totto-chan!\" Tai-chan's voice sounded cross, and she stopped, startled. Pausing for breath, Tai- chan said, \"When I grow up, I'm not going to marry you, no matter how much you ask me to.\" So saying, he walked off, his eyes on the ground. Totto-chan stood dazed, watching until he and his large head disappeared from view. That head full of brains that she admired so much. That head that looked so much bigger than his body the children used to call him \"The Improper Fraction.\" Totto-chan put her hands in her pockets and thought. She could not remember doing anything to annoy him. In desperation she talked it over with her classmate Miyo- chan. After listening to Totto-chan, Miyo-chan said, maturely, \"Why, of course! It's because you threw Tai-chan out of the ring today at sumo wrestling. It's not surprising he flew out of the ring the way he did because his head's so heavy. But he's still bound to be mad at you.\" Totto-chan regretted it with all her heart. Yes, that was it. What on earth made her beat the boy she liked so much She Sharpened his pencils every day! But it was too late. She could never be his bride now. \"I'm going to go on sharpening his pencils all the same,\" Totto-chan decided. \"After all, I love him.\" “Shabby, Old School” 71

There was a jingle--a sort of singsong refrain—that was popular among elementary school children. They did it a lot at her previous school. As the children went home after school, they would go out the gate looking back over their shoulders at their school and chant: Akamatsu School's a shabby old school; Inside though, it's a splendid school! When children from some other school happened to pass by, these pupils would point their fingers at Akamatsu School and chant: Akamatsu School's a splendid school; Inside though, it's a shabby old school! And they would end by making a rude noise. Whether a school was shabby or splendid in the first line depended on whether the building was old or new. The important part of the chant was the second line. The part that said what the school was like inside. So it didn't really matter if the first line said your school was shabby on the outside. It was what it was like inside that mattered. The jingle was always chanted by at least five or six children together. One afternoon after school the Tomoe pupils were playing as usual. They could do anything they liked until the final bell, when they had to leave the school grounds. The headmaster thought it was important for children to have time when they were free to do whatever they liked, so this period after classes were over was longer than at other elementary schools. That day some were playing ball, some had made themselves all dirty playing on the iron bars or in the sandbox, some were tending the flower beds, some of the older girls were just sitting on the steps chatting, and some were climbing trees. They were all doing just what they wanted. Among them were a few, like Tai-chan, who had stayed behind in the classroom to continue a physics experiment and were boiling flasks and doing experiments in test tubes. There were children in the library reading, and Amadera, who liked animals, was scrutinizing a stray cat he had found, turning it on its back and examining inside its ears. They were all enjoying themselves in their own ways. Suddenly, a loud chant was heard outside the school: Tomoe School is a shabby old school; Inside, too, it's a shabby old school! \"That's terrible,\" thought Totto-chan. She happened to be right by the gate. Well, it wasn't really a gate, as it had leaves growing out of the posts. But at any rate, she heard them very clearly. It was too much. Imagine calling their school shabby both inside and out! She was indignant. The others were indignant, too, and came running toward the gate. \"Shabby old school!\" reiterated the boys from the other school, as they ran off making rude noises. 72

Totto-chan was so-infuriated she ran after the boys. All by herself. But they were very fast, running down a side sneer and disappearing as quick as a wink. Totto-chan walked back to school disconsolately. As she walked, she sang: Tomoe School is a wonderful school; A few steps along, she added: Inside and out, it's a wonderful school! She liked it, and it made her feel better. So when she got back, she pretended she was from another school and shouted through the hedge in a loud voice, so that everybody could hear: Tomoe School is a wonderful school; Inside and out, it's a wonderful school! The children playing in the grounds at first couldn't imagine who it was. When they realized it was Totto-chan, they went out to the road and joined in. Finally they all linked arms and marched along the roads surrounding the school chanting together. It was their hearts that were in unison even more than their voices, although they didn't realize that then. The more they went around the school, the more they entered into the spirit of it. Tomoe School is a wonderful school; Inside and out, it's a wonderful school! The children little knew, of course, what happiness their chant was giving the headmaster, as he sat listening in his office. It must be the same for any educator, but for those in particular who truly think about the children, running a school must be a daily series of agonies. It must have been even more so at a school like Tomoe, where everything was so unusual. The school could not escape criticism from people used to a more conventional system of education. In such circumstances, that song of the children was the nicest gift they could possibly have given the headmaster. Tomoe School is a wonderful school; Inside and out, it's a wonderful school! That day the final bell rang later than usual. The Hair Ribbon One day at lunch break, after the children had finished eating, Totto-chan was skipping across the Assembly Hall when she met the headmaster. It is perhaps odd 73

to say she met the headmaster when he had been with them all through lunch, but she met him because he was coming from the opposite direction. \"Oh, there you are,\" said the headmaster. \"I've been wanting to ask you something.\" \"What is it?\" asked Totto-chan, delighted to think she could give the headmaster some information. \"Where did you get that ribbon?\" he asked, looking at the bow she had in her hair. The expression on Totto-chan's face when she heard that couldn't have been a happier one. She had been wearing the bow since the day before. It was something she had found herself. She went up closer so the headmaster could see the ribbon better. “It was on my aunt's old school uniform,\" she said proudly. \"I noticed it when she was putting it in a drawer and she gave it to me. Auntie said I was very observant.” \"I see,\" said the headmaster, deep in thought. Totto-chan was very proud of the ribbon. She told him how she had Bone to see her aunt and was lucky to find her aunt airing some clothes. Among them was the old- fashioned, long, purple pleated skirt she had worn when she was a schoolgirl. As her aunt was putting it away, Totto-chan noticed something pretty on it. \"What's that?\" At Totto-chan's question, her aunt paused. The something pretty turned out to be this ribbon that was attached to the waistband at the back. \"It was supposed to make you look pretty from the back,\" said Auntie. \"In those days everyone wanted to put a piece of handmade lace there or a wide ribbon tied in a big bow. She noticed how longingly Totto-chan gazed at the bow as she listened, stroking it and feeling it, and said, \"I’ll give it to you. I shan't be wearing it again.\" She took some scissors and cut the thread attaching it to the skirt and gave it to Totto-chan. That was how she got it. It really was a beautiful ribbon. It was wide and of very good silk, and had roses and all sorts of designs woven into it. Wide and stiff when it was tied, if made a bow as big as Totto-chan's head. Auntie said the fabric was imported. While she was speaking, Totto-chan jiggled her head occasionally so the headmaster could hear the rustling sound the ribbon made. When he had heard her story, the headmaster looked a little distressed. \"So that's it,\" he said. \"Yesterday Miyo-chan said she wanted a ribbon just like yours, so I went to all the ribbon shops in Jiyugaoka, but they didn't have anything like it. So that's it. It's imported, is it?\" 74

His face was more like that of a troubled father importuned by his daughter than of a headmaster. \"Totto-chan, I'd be truly grateful if you'd stop wearing that ribbon to school. You see, Miyo-chan keeps pestering me about it. Would you mind very much?\" Totto-chan thought it over, her arms folded. Then she answered quickly, “All right. I won't wear it here any more.\" \"Thank you,\" said the headmaster. Totto-chan was rather sorry, but the headmaster was in trouble, so she had agreed. Another reason was that the thought of a grown-up man--her beloved headmaster- searching high and low in all the ribbon shops, made her feel sorry for him. That was the way it was at Tomoe. Without realizing it, everyone got in the habit of understanding one another's problems and trying to help, irrespective of age. It became the natural thing to do. The following morning, when Mother went into Totto-chan's room to clean up after Totto-chan had left for school, she found the ribbon tied around the neck of Totto- chan's favorite teddy bear. She wondered why Totto-chan had suddenly given up wearing the ribbon she had been so thrilled about. Mother thought the gray teddy bear looked slightly embarrassed about being dressed so gaily all of a sudden. Visiting the Wounded For the first time in her life Totto-chan visited a hospital for wounded soldiers. She went with about thirty elementary school children from various schools, children she didn't know. It was part of a scheme recently organized nationally for groups of elementary school children. Each school would normally send two or three children, but small schools like Tomoe only sent one, and the group would be in the charge of a teacher from one of the schools. Totto-chan was representing Tomoe. The teacher in charge was a thin woman who wore glasses. She led the children into a ward where there were about fifteen soldiers in white pajamas, some in bed and others walking about. Totto-chan had worried about what wounded soldiers would look like, but they all smiled and waved their hands and seemed cheerful so she was relieved, although some had bandages on their heads. The teacher assembled the children in the middle of the ward and addressed the soldiers. \"We've come to visit you,\" she said, and the children all bowed. The teacher went on, \"Since to-day is the fifth of May-boy's Day-we're going to sing 'Carp Streamers.' \" She raised her arms, like a conductor, said to the children, \"Now, ready! Three, four,\" and began to beat time. The children didn't know each other but they all began singing whole heartedly: Over the sea of rooftops, Over the sea of clouds ... 75

Totto-chan didn't know the song. They didn't teach that sort of song at Tomoe. She sat on the edge of the bed of a man with a kind face who was sitting up, and just listened to them singing, feeling rather awkward. When that song was over, the teacher announced very clearly, \"Now we shall sing 'The Doll Festival.' \" They sang it beautifully. All except Totto-chan. Come let us light the lanterns, Light them one by one... There was nothing Totto-chan could do but remain silent. When they had all finished singing, the men clapped. The teacher smiled and said, \"Now then, what about 'The pony and the Mare'! All together. Three, four,\" and started beating time again. Totto-chan didn't know that one either. When the children had finished singing it, the soldier in the bed Totto-chan was sitting on paned her head and said, \"You didn't sing.\" Totto-chan felt very apologetic. She had come to visit the soldiers and she couldn't even sing them a single song. So she got up, and, standing a little away from the bed, said bravely, \"All right. Now I’ll sing one I know. Something was about to happen that wasn't according to plan. \"What are you going to sing!\" asked the teacher. But Totto-chan had already taken a deep breath and was starting to sing, so she decided to wait. Since she was representing Tomoe, Totto-chan thought she had better sing Tomoe's best-known song. After taking that deep breath, she began: Chew, chew, chew it well, Everything you eat... Some of the children laughed. Others asked their neighbors, \"What's the song! What's the song!\" The teacher started to beat time, but nor knowing quite what to do, was left with arms in midair. Totto-chan was embarrassed, but she sang for all she was worth: Chew it and chew it and chew it and chew it, Your rice and fish and meat! When she finished singing, Totto-chan bowed. When she raised her head, she was astonished to see tears streaming down the face of the soldier. She thought she must have done something bad. And then the soldier, who looked a little older than Daddy, patted her head again, and said, \"Thank you! Thank you!\" 76

He went on patting her head, and he couldn't stop crying. Then the teacher said brightly, as if to try and cheer him up, \"Now I think it's time to read out the compositions we've written for the soldiers.\" The children took turns reading their compositions aloud. Totto-chan looked at her soldier. His nose and eyes were led, but he smiled. Totto-chan smiled back. And she thought to herself, \"I'm so glad the soldier smiled!\" What had brought tears to that soldier's eyes, only the soldier knew. Maybe he had a little girl like Totto-chan. Or maybe he was simply touched by the sweet way she sang that song as best she could. Or maybe because of his experience at the war front, he knew how near they all were to starvation, and the thought of this little girl singing \"Chew it well\" when there might soon be nothing left to chew may have filled him with sadness. The soldier may also have realized what terrible events would soon engulf these very children. The children, reading their compositions, may not have sensed it then, but the Pacific War was already well underway. Health Bark Showing her train pass on the cord around her neck to the man at the gate--whom she now knew quite well-Totto-chan walked out of the station at Jiyugaoka. Something very interesting was going on. A young man was sitting cross-legged on a mat behind an enormous pile of what looked like pieces of tree bark. Five or six people stood around looking down at him. Totto-chan decided to join them, since the man was saying, \"Now watch me carefully, watch me carefully. When the man saw Totto-chan stop, he said, \"The most important thing for you is health. When you get up in the morning and want to know whether you are well or not, this piece of balk will tell you. Ever, morning all you have to do is chew a bit of this bark. If it tastes bitter, it proves you are not well. If it doesn't taste bitter, you know you're all right. You're not ill. This bark that tells you whether you're ill or not only costs twenty sen! Will that gentleman over there care to try a piece!\" He handed the bark to a rather thin man, who timidly bit it with his front teeth. The man tilted his head slightly and considered it. \"It does seem... a tiny bit... uh.., bitter.\" The young man leaped up, exclaiming, \"Sir, you must be suffering from some disease. You'll have to be careful. But don't worry, it's not very serious yet. You said it just seemed a little bitter. Now what about the lady over there. Would you mind chewing this, please!\" A woman with a shopping basket took a larger piece of bark and chewed it vigorously. She announced cheerfully, \"Why, that wasn't bitter at all!\" \"Congratulations, madam,\" said the man. \"You must be very healthy, indeed.\" Then he said, raising his voice, “Only twenty sen! Twenty sen! That's all it costs to find out every morning whether you are healthy or not. A real bargain!\" Totto-chan wanted to try a bite of the grayish bark, too, but was too shy to ask. Instead, she asked, \"Will you still be here when school's over?\" 77

\"Sure,\" said the man, glancing at the young school child. Totto-chan ran off, her bag flapping against her back. She didn't want to be late since there was something she had to do before school began. She had to ask the children something the moment she got to her classroom. \"Can anybody lend me twenty sen?\" But nobody had twenty sen. One of those long packers of caramels only cost ten sen, so it wasn't very much money, really, but nobody had it. \"Shall I ask my parents?\" asked Miyo-chan. At times like these it was very convenient that Miyo-chan happened to be the daughter of the head-master. Miyo-chan's house adjoined-the Assembly Hall, so it was just as if her mother lived at the school. \"Daddy says he'll lend it to you,\" she told Totto-chan at lunchtime, \"but he wants to know what it's for.\" Totto-chan made her way to the office. \"So you want twenty sen,\" he said, taking off his glasses. \"What do you want it for?\" \"I want to buy a piece of bark that tells you whether you're sick or whether you’re well,\" she replied quickly. The headmaster's curiosity was aroused. \"Where are they selling them?\" \"In front of the station,\" she replied, in a great hurry. \"All right,\" said the headmaster. \"Buy one if you want. But let me have a bite, won't you?\" He took a purse out of his jacket pocket and placed twenty sen in Totto-chan's palm. \"Oh, thank you so much!\" said Totto-chan. \"I'll get the money from Mother and pay you back. She always gives me money for books. If I want to buy anything else I have to ask first, but health bark is something everybody needs so I'm sure she won't mind.\" When school was over, Totto-chan hurried to the station, clutching her twenty sen. The man was still there, extolling his product in a loud patter. When he saw the twenty sen in Totto-chan's hand, he broke into a broad grin. \"Good girl! Your mother and father will be pleased.\" \"So will Rocky,\" said Totto-chan. \"Who's Rocky?' asked the man, as he picked out a piece of bark for Totto-chan. \"He's our dog. He's a German shepherd.\" 78

The man stopped and thought for a minute, then said, \"A dog ... well, I suppose it'll work with a dog, too. After all, if it's bitter he won't like it and that'll mean he's ill.\" The man picked out a piece of bark about one inch wide and six inches long. \"Here you are. Bite some every morning and if it's bitter, you're sick. If not, you're as fit as a fiddle!\" Totto-chan went home carefully carrying the precious bark wrapped in newspaper. The first thing she did when she got there was to take a small bite. It was dry and rough, but not bitter. In fact it didn't taste of anything at all. \"Hooray! I'm healthy!\" \"Of course you are,\" said Mother, smiling. \"What on earth's the matter?\" Totto-chan explained. Mother tried biting a piece of the bark, too. “It's not bitter.” \"Then you're healthy, too, Mother!\" Then Totto-chan went over to Rocky and held the bark to his mouth. First Rocky sniffed it. Then he licked it. \"You've got to bite it,\" said Totto-chan. \"Then you'll know whether you're sick or not.\" But Rocky made no attempt to bite it. He just scratched the back of his ear with his paw. Totto-chan held the tree bark closer to his mouth. \"Come on, bite it! It would be terrible if you weren't well.\" Rocky reluctantly bit a tiny piece off the edge. Then he sniffed it again, but he didn't look as if he particularly disliked it. He just let out a big yawn. \"Hooray! Rocky's healthy, too!\" Next morning, Mother gave Totto-chan twenty sen. She went straight to the headmaster's office and thrust out the tree bark. For a moment the headmaster looked at it as if to say, \"What's this!\" Then he saw the twenty sen Totto-chan had brought him, clutched carefully in her hand, and remembered. \"Bite it,\" said Totto-chan. \"If it's bitter, it means you're ill.\" The headmaster bit some. Then he turned the bark over and studied it carefully. \"Does- it taste bitter?\" asked Totto-chan, concerned, looking at the headmaster's face. “It hasn't any taste at all.\" 79

As he returned the bark to Totto-chan, he said, \"I'm fine. Thank you.” \"Hooray! The headmaster's healthy! I'm so glad.\" That day Totto-chan got everybody in the school to bite a piece of bark. Not a single child found it bitter, which meant they were all healthy. Totto-chan was very glad. The children all went and told the headmaster they were healthy, and to each child the headmaster replied, \"That's good.\" The headmaster must have known all along. He was born and bred in the heart of the country in Gumma Prefecture, beside a river from which you could see Mount Haruna. He must have known that the bark would not taste bitter, no matter who chewed it. But the headmaster thought it was nice for Totto-chan to be so glad to find that everyone was healthy. He was happy that Totto-chan had been brought up to be the kind of person who would have been worried and concerned about anyone who might have said the bark tasted bitter. Totto-chan even tried pushing the tree bark into the mouth of a stray dog walking near the school. She almost got bitten, but that didn't daunt her. \"You'll know whether you're sick or not,\" she shouted at the dog. \"Come on, bite it! 'Cause if you're healthy, then that's fine.\" She succeeded in getting that dog she didn't know to bite a piece. Skipping around the dog she cried, \"Hooray! You're healthy, too!\" The dog bowed its head, as if thanking her, and ran off. Just as the headmaster guessed, the bark-seller never showed up in Jiyugaoka again. Even, morning, before she left for school, Totto-chan took the precious piece of bark from her drawer--it now looked as if an energetic beaver had been at it--and chewed some of it, calling out as she left the house, \"I'm healthy!\" And, thankfully, Totto-chan was in fact healthy. The English-speaking Child A new pupil arrived at Tomoe. He was tall for an elementary school boy, and~ broad. Totto-chan thought he looked more like a seventh grader. His clothes were different, too, more like grown-up ones. That morning in the school grounds the head-master introduced the new student. \"This is Miyazaki. He was born and brought up in America, so he doesn't speak Japanese very well. That's why he has come to Tomoe, where he will be able to make 80

friends more easily and take his time over his studies. He's one of you now. What grade shall we put him in! What about fifth grade, with Ta-chan and the others!\" \"That's fine,\" said Ta-chan - who was good at drawing--in a big-brotherly voice. The headmaster smiled and went on, \"I said he wasn't very good at Japanese, but he's very good at English. Get him to teach you some. He's not used to life in Japan, though, so you'll help him, won't you? And ask him about life in America. He'll be able to tell you all sorts of interesting things. Well, then, I’ll leave him with you.\" Miyazaki bowed to his classmates, who were all much smaller than he was. And all the children, not only the children in Ta-chan's class, bowed back. At lunchtime Miyazaki went over to the head-master's house, and all the others followed him. Then what did he do but start to walk into the house with his shoes on! All the children shouted at him, \"You've got to take off your shoes?\" Miyazaki seemed startled. \"Oh, excuse me,\" he said, taking them off. The children began telling him what to do, all talking at once. \"You have to take your shoes off for rooms with tatami-matted floors and for the Assembly Hall. You can keep them on in the classrooms and in the library. \"When you go to Kuhonbutsu Temple you can keep them on in the courtyard but you have to take them off in the temple.\" It was fun learning about the differences between living in Japan and living abroad. Next day Miyazaki brought a big English picture book to school. They all clustered around him at lunchtime to look at the book. They were amazed. They had never seen such a beautiful picture book More. The picture books they knew were only printed in bright reds, greens, and yellows, but this one had pale flesh-colored pinks. As for the blues, they were lovely shades, mixed with white and gray--colors that didn't exist in crayons. There were lots of colors besides the standard twenty-four in a box of crayons, colors that were not even in Ta-chan's special box of forty-eight. Everyone was impressed. As for the pictures, the first one was of a dog pulling a baby by its diaper. What impressed them was that the baby didn't look as if it was painted but had soft pink skin just like a teal baby. They had never seen a picture book that was so big and printed on such lovely, thick, shiny paper. In her usual sociable way, Totto-chan got as close to Miyazaki and the picture book as she could.. Miyazaki read the English text to them. The English language sounded so smooth that they listened enraptured. Then Miyazaki began to grapple with Japanese. Miyazaki certainly had brought something new and different to the school. \"Akachan is baby,\" he began. They all repeated it after him. “Akachan is baby.” 81

\"UtsukuSHII is beautiful,\" Miyazaki said next, stressing the \"ku.\" \"UuukuSHII is beautiful,\" repeated the others. Miyazaki then realized his Japanese pronunciation had been wrong. \"It's utsukuSHII, is it? Right?\" Miyazaki and the other children soon became good friends. Every day he brought various books to Tomoe and read them to the others at lunchtime. It was just as if Miyazaki was their English tutor. At the same time Miyazaki's Japanese quickly improved. And he stopped making blunders like sitting in the tokonama, the alcove reserved for hanging-scrolls and ornaments. Totto-chan and her friends learned lots of things about America. Japan and America were becoming friends at Tomoe. But outside Tomoe, America had become an enemy, and since English had become an enemy language, it was dropped from the curriculum of all the schools. \"Americans are devils,\" the government announced. But at Tomoe the children kept chanting in chorus, \"Utsukushii is beautiful.\" And the breezes that blew across Tomoe were soft and warm, and the children themselves were beautiful. Amateur Drama \"We're going to put on a play!\" It was the first play in Tomoe's history. The custom of someone giving a talk at lunchtime was still going on, but imagine performing a play on the little stage with the grand piano the headmaster always played for eurythmics and inviting an audience. None of the children had even seen a play, not even Totto-chan. Apart from Swan Lake, she had never once been to the theater. Nevertheless, they all discussed what sort of program they should put on for their end-of-year performance. Totto-chan's class decided to do Kanjincho (“The Fund-Raising Charter”). This famous old Kabuki play was not exactly what you would expect to see at Tomoe, but it was in one of their textbooks and Mr. Maruyama would coach them. They decided Aiko Saisho would make a good Benkei, the strong man, since she was big and tall, and Amadera, who could look stern and had a loud voice, should play Togashi, the commander. After talking it over, they all came to the conclusion that Totto-chan should be the noble Yoshitsune, who, in the play, is disguised as a porter. All the others would be strolling monks. Before they could begin rehearsing, the children had to learn their lines. It was nice for Totto-chan and the monks, for they had nothing to say. All that the monks were required to do was stand silently throughout, while Totto-chan, as Yoshitsune, had to remain kneeling, with her face hidden by a large straw hat. Benkei, in reality Yoshitsune's servant, beats and upbraids his master in a clever attempt to get the part past the Ataka Checkpoint by posing as a band of monks collecting funds to restore a temple. Aiko Saisho, playing Benkei, had a tremendous part. Besides all the verbal thrust and parry with Togashi, the checkpoint commander, there was the exciting bit 82

where Benkei has to pretend to read out the Fund-Raising Charter when ordered by the commander to do so. The scroll he \"reads\" from is blank, and he brilliantly extemporizes an appeal for funds in pompous ecclesiastical language: \"Firstly, for the purpose of the reiteration of the temple known as Todaiji ...” Aiko Saisho practiced her \"Firstly\" speech every day. The role of Togashi, too, had lots of dialogue, as he tries to refute Benkei's arguments, and Amadera struggled to memorize it. Finally rehearsal time came. Togashi and Benkei faced each other, with the monks lined up behind Benkei, and Totto-chan, as Yoshitsune, kneeling, huddled over, in front. But Totto-chan didn't understand what it was all about. So when Benkei had to knock Yoshitsune down with his staff and strike him, Totto-chan reacted violently. She kicked Aiko Saisho in the legs and scratched her. Aiko cried and the monks giggled. Yoshitsune was supposed to remain still, looking cowed, no matter how-much Benkei beat and hit him. The idea is that while Togashi suspects the truth, he is so impressed by Benkei's ruse and the pain it must cost him to ill-treat his noble master, that he lets them through the checkpoint. To have Yoshitsune resisting would ruin the whole plot. Mr. Maruyama tried to explain this to Totto-chan. But Totto-chan was adamant. She insisted that if Aiko Saisho hit her she would hit back. So they made no progress. No matter how many times they tried the scene, Totto-chan always put up a fight. \"I'm terribly sorry,\" said Mr. Maruyama to Totto-chan finally, \"but I think we had better ask Tai-chan to play the part of Yoshitsune.\" Totto-chan was relieved. She didn't like being the only one who got knocked about. \"Totto-chan, will you please be a monk?\" asked Mr. Maruyama. So Totto-chan stood with the other monks, but right at the back. Mr. Maruyama and the children thought everything would be fine now, but they were wrong. He shouldn't have let Totto-chan have a monk's long staff. Totto-chan got bored with standing still so she started poking the feet of the monk next to her with the staff, and tickling the monk in front under his armpits. She even pretended to conduct with it, which was not only dangerous for those nearby but also ruined the scene between Benkei and Togashi. So eventually she was deprived of her role as a monk, too. Tai-chan as Yoshitsune, gritted his teeth manfully as he was knocked over and beaten, and the audience must surely have felt sorry for him. Rehearsals progressed smoothly without Totto-chan. Left by herself, Totto-chan went out into the school grounds. She took off her shoes and started to improvise a Totto-chan ballet. It was lovely dancing according to her own fancy. Sometimes she was a swan, sometimes the wind, sometimes a grotesque 83

person, sometimes a tree. All alone in the deserted playground she danced and danced. Deep in her heart, however, there was a tiny feeling that she would like to be playing Yoshitsune. But had they allowed her to, she would surely have hit and scratched Aiko Saisho. Thus it was that Totto-chan was not able to take part in the first and last amateur drama at Tomoe. Chalk Tomoe children never scrawled on other people's walls or on the road. That was because they had ample opportunity for doing it at school. During music periods in the Assembly Hall, the headmaster would give each child a piece of white chalk. They could lie or sit anywhere they liked on the floor and wait, chalk in hand. When they were all ready, the headmaster started playing the piano. As he did so, they would write the rhythms, in musical notation, on the floor. It was lovely writing in chalk on the shiny light brown wood. There were only about ten pupils in Totto-chan's class, so when they were spread around the large Assembly Hall, they had plenty of floor on which to write their notes as large as they wanted without encroaching on anyone else's space. They didn't need lines for their notation, since they just wrote down the rhythm. At Tomoe musical notes had special names the children devised themselves after talking it over with the headmaster. Here they are: (musical symbol) was called a skip, because it was a good rhythm to skip and jump to. (musical symbol)was called a flag, because it looked like one. (musical symbol) was called a double-flag. (musical symbol) was called a black. (musical symbol) was called a white (musical symbol) was called a white-with-a-mole, or a white 'n' dot. (musical symbol) was called a circle. This way they learned to know the notes well and it was fun. It was a class they loved. Writing on the floor with chalk was the head-master's idea. Paper wasn't big enough and there weren't enough blackboards to go around. He thought the Assembly Hall floor would make a nice big blackboard on which the children could note the rhythm with ease no matter how fast the music was, and writing as large as they liked, Above all, they could enjoy the music. And if there was time afterward, they could draw airplanes and dolls and anything they wanted. Sometimes the children would 84

join up their drawings just for fun and the whole floor would become one enormous picture. At intervals during the music class, the headmaster would come over and inspect each child's rhythms. He would comment, \"That's good,\" or \"it wasn't a flag-flag there, it was a skip.\" After he had approved or corrected their notation, he played the music over again so they could check what they had done and familiarize themselves with the rhythms. No matter how busy he was, the head-master never let anyone else take these classes for him. And as far as the children were concerned, it wouldn't have been any fun at all without Mr. Kobayashi. Cleaning up after writing rhythms was quite a job. First you had to wipe the floor with a blackboard eraser, and then everyone joined forces to make the floor spick and span again with mops and rags. It was an enormous task. In this way Tomoe children learned what trouble cleaning off graffiti could be, so they never scribbled anywhere except on the floor of the Assembly Hall. Moreover, this class took place about twice a week, so the children had their fill of scribbling. The children at Tomoe became real experts on chalk--which kind was best, how to hold it, how to manipulate it for the best results, how not to break it. Every one of them was a chalk connoisseur. \"Yasuaki-chan's Dead\" It was the first morning of school after the spring vacation. Mr. Kobayashi stood in front of the children assembled on the school grounds, his hands in his pockets as usual. But he didn't say anything for some time. Then he took his hands out of his pockets and looked at the children. He looked as if he had been crying. \"Yasuaki-chan's dead,\" he said slowly. \"We're all going to his funeral today.\" Then he went on, \"You all liked Yasuaki-chan, I know. It's a great shame. I feel terribly sad.\" He only got that far when his face became bright red and tears welled up in his eyes. The children were stunned and nobody said a word. They were all thinking about Yasuaki-chan. Never had such a sad quietness passed over the grounds of Tomoe before. \"Imagine dying so soon,\" thought Totto-chan. \"I haven't even finished Uncle Tom's Cabin that Yasuaki-chan said I ought to read and lent me before the vacation.\" She remembered how crooked his fingers had looked when she and Yasuaki-chan said goodbye before spring vacation and he handed her the book. She recalled the first time she met him, when she had asked, \"Why do you walk like that?\" and his soft reply, \"I had polio\" She thought of the sound of his voice and his little smile. And that summer tree-climbing adventure of just the two of them. She remembered with nostalgia how heavy his body had been, and the way he had trusted her implicitly even though he was older and taller. It was Yasuaki-chan who told her they had something in America called television. Totto-chan loved Yasuaki-chan. They had lunch together, spent their breaks together, and walked to the station 85

together after school. She would miss him so much. Totto-chan realized that death meant Yasuaki-chan would never come to school any more. It was like those baby chicks. When they died, no matter how she called to them they never moved again. Yasuaki-chan's funeral took place at a church on the opposite side of Denenchofu from where he lived. The children walked there in silence from Jiyugaoka, in single file. Totto-chan didn't look around her as she usually did but kept her eyes on the ground the whole time. She realized she now felt differently from when the headmaster had told them the sad news. Her first reaction was disbelief, and then came sadness. But now all she wanted was to see Yasuaki-chan alive just once more. She wanted to talk to him so much she could hardly bear it. The church was filled with white lilies. Yasuaki-chan's pretty mother and sister and relatives, all dressed in black, were standing outside the church. When they saw Totto-chan they cried even more, their white handkerchiefs in their hands. It was the first rime Totto-chan had been to a funeral, and she realized how sad it was. Nobody talked, and the organ played soft hymn music. The sun was shining and the church was full of light, but there was no happiness in it anywhere. A man with a black arm- band handed a single white flower to each of the Tomoe children and explained that they were to walk one after the other and place their flower in Yasuaki-chan's coffin. Yasuaki-chan lay in the coffin with his eyes closed, surrounded by flowers. Although he was dead, he looked as kind and clever as ever. Totto-chan knelt and placed her flower by his hand and gently touched it--the beloved hand she had held so often. His hand was so much whiter than her grubby little hand and his fingers so much longer, like a grown-ups. \"Bye now,\" she whispered to Yasuaki-chan. \"Maybe we'll meet again somewhere when we're much older. And maybe your polio will be cured by then.\" Then Totto-chan got up and looked at Yasuaki-chan once more. \"Oh yes, I forgot,\" she said, \"Uncle Tom's Cabin. I shan't be able to return it to you now, shall I? I'll keep it for you, until we meet next time.\" As she started walking away, she was sure she heard his voice behind her, \"Totto- chan, we had a lot of fun together, didn't we? I'II never forget you. Never.” When Totto-chan reached the entrance, she turned around. I’ll never forget you either,\" she said. The spring sunshine shone softly just as it had on the day she first met Yasuaki-chan in the classroom-in-the-train. But unlike that day, her cheeks were wet with tears. A Spy The children at Tomoe were sad for a long time, thinking about Yasuaki-chan, particularly so in the morning, when it was time to start class. It took a while for the children to get used to the fact that Yasuaki was not just late, but wasn't ever coming again. Small classes might be nice, but at times like this it made things much harder. Yasuaki-chan's absence was so conspicuous. The only saving grace was the fact that 86

seats were not assigned. If he had had a regular desk, its being vacant would have been awful. Recently Totto-chan had begun to think about what she would like to be when she grew up. When she was younger she thought she wanted to be a street musician or a ballerina, and the day she first arrived at Tomoe she thought it would be nice to be a ticket seller at a station. But now she thought she would like to do some kind of work that was unusual but a little more feminine. It might be rather nice to be a nurse, she thought. But she suddenly remembered that when she had visited the wounded soldiers in the hospital she had noticed nurses doing things like giving injections, and that might be rather difficult. So what should she do! Suddenly she was transported with joy. \"Why, of course! I've already decided what 1 am going to be!\" She went over to Tai-chan, who had just lit his alcohol burner. \"I'm thinking of becoming a spy,\" she said proudly. Tai-chan turned away from the flame and looked at Totto-chan's face for some time. Then he gazed out of the window for a while, as if he were thinking it over, before turning to Totto-chan again to say in his intelligent, resonant voice, slowly and simply, so she would understand, \"You have to be clever to be a spy. Besides that, you've got to know a lot of languages.\" Tai-chan paused a moment for breath. Then he looked straight at her and said bluntly, \"In the first place, a lady spy has to be beautiful.\" Totto-chan slowly lowered her eyes from Tai-chan's gaze and hung her head. After a pause, Tai-chan said thoughtfully in a low voice, this time without looking at Totto- chan, \"And-besides, I don't think a chatterbox could be a spy.” Totto-chan was dumbfounded. Not because he was against her being a spy. But because everything Tai-chan said was true. They were all things she had suspected. She realized then that in every respect she lacked the talents a spy needed. She knew, of course, that Tai-chan had not said those things out of spite. There was nothing to do but give up the idea. It was just as well she had talked it over with him. \"Goodness me,\" she thought to herself, \"Tai-chan's the same age as I am and yet he knows so much more.\" Supposing Tai-chan told her he was thinking of being a physicist. What on earth would she be able to say in reply? She might say, \"Well, you're good at lighting alcohol burners with a match.\" But that would sound too childish. \"Well, you know that kitsune is 'fox' in English and kutsu are 'shoes,' so I think you could be a physicist.\" No, that wasn't good enough, either. In any event, she was quite sure Tai-chan was destined to do something brilliant. So she just said sweetly to Tai-chan, who was watching the bubbles form in his flask, 87

“Thank you. I shan't be a spy, then. But I'm sure you will become somebody important.\" Tai-chan mumbled something, scratched his head, and buried himself in the book that lay open before him. If she couldn't be a spy, then what could she be, wondered Totto-chan, as she stood beside Tai-chan and stared at the flame on his burner. Daddy's Violin Before they knew it, the war with all its horrors was beginning to make itself felt in the life of Totto-chan and her family. Every day men and boys from the neighborhood were sent off with waving flags and shouts of \"Banzai!\" Foodstuffs rapidly disappeared one after the other from the shops. It became harder to comply with the Tomoe lunchtime rule of \"something from the ocean and something from the hills.\" Mother was making do with seaweed and pickled plums, but soon even that became difficult to get. Just about everything was rationed. There were no sweets to be found, no matter how hard you searched. Totto-chan knew about a vending machine under the stairs at Ookayama, the station before hers, where you could get a packer of caramels if you put money in the slot. There was a very appetizing picture on top of the machine. You could get a small packet for five sen and a big one for ten. But the machine had been empty for a long time now. Nothing would come out no matter how much money you put in or how hard you banged. Totto-chan was more persistent than most. \"Maybe there's still one packet in there some where,\" she thought. \"Maybe it's caught inside.\" So every day she got off the train at the stop before hers and tried putting five- and ten-sen coins into the machine. But all she got back was her money. It fell out with a clatter. About that time, someone told Daddy what most people would have thought welcome news. If he went and played popular wartime music on his violin at something called a munitions factory—where they made weapons and other things used in war—he would be given sugar and rice and other treats. Since Daddy, who had recently been awarded a prestigious musical decoration, was well known as a violinist, the friend told him he would certainly be given a lot of extra presents. \"What do you think?\" Mother asked Daddy. \"Are you going to do it?\" Concerts were certainly becoming scarce. In the first place, more and more musicians were being called up and the orchestra was short of players. Radio broadcasts were almost entirely given over to programs connected with the war, so there was not much work for Daddy and his colleagues. He ought to have welcomed the opportunity to play anything. Daddy thought for some time before replying. \"I don't want to play that sort of thing on my violin.\" 88

\"I think you're right,\" said Mother. \"I would refuse. We’ll get food somehow.\" Daddy knew Totto-chan had barely enough to eat and was vainly putting money in the caramel vending machine every day. He also knew that the gifts of food he would receive for playing a few wartime tunes would be very handy for his family. But Daddy valued his music even more. Mother knew that, too, and so she never urged him to do it. \"Forgive me, Totsky!\" said Daddy, sadly. Totto-chan was too young to know about art and ideology and work. But she did know that Daddy loved the violin so much he had been something called \"disowned,\" and many of his family and relatives did not speak to him any more. He had had a hard time, but he had refused to give up the violin all the same. So Totto-chan thought it quite right for him not to play something he didn't like. Totto-chan skipped about around Daddy and said cheerfully, \"I don't mind. Because I love your violin, too.\" But the next day Totto-chan again got off at Ookayama and peered into the hole in the vending machine. It was unlikely that anything would come out, but she still kept hoping. The Promise After lunch, when the children put away the chairs and desks that had been arranged in a circle, the Assembly Hall seemed quite spacious. \"Today, I'm going to be the first to climb on the headmaster's back,\" decided Totto- chan. That's what she always wanted to do, but if she hesitated for a moment, someone else would have already climbed into his lap as he sat cross-legged in the middle of the Assembly Hall, and at least two others would be scrambling onto his back, clamoring for his attention. \"Hey, stop it, stop it,\" the headmaster would remonstrate, red in the face with laughter, but once they had occupied his back, the children were determined not to give up their position. So if you were the least bit slow, you'd find the headmaster's back very crowded. But this time Totto-chan made up her mind to be there first and was already waiting in the middle of the Assembly Hall when the headmaster arrived. As he approached, she shouted to him, \"Sir, I've got something to tell you.” \"What is it, then?\" asked the headmaster delightedly, as he sat down on the floor and started to cross his legs. Totto-chan wanted to tell him what she had decided after several days' thought. When the headmaster had crossed his legs, Totto-chan suddenly decided against climbing on his back. What she had to say would be more appropriate said face to face. So she sat down very close to him, facing him, and tilted her head a little with a smile that Mother had called her \"nice face\" ever since she was small. It was her \"Sunday best\" face. She felt confident when she smiled like that, her mouth slightly open, and she herself believed she was a good girl. 89

The headmaster looked at her expectantly. \"What is it?\" he asked again, leaning forward. Totto-chan said sweetly and slowly, in a big-sisterly or motherly way, \"I'd like to teach at this school when I grow up. I really would.\" Totto-chan expected the headmaster to smile, but instead, he asked in all seriousness, \"Promise?\" He really seemed to want her to do it. Totto-chan nodded her head vigorously and said, \"I promise,\" determining in her heart to become a teacher there without fail. At that moment she was thinking about the morning when she first came to Tomoe as a first grader and met the headmaster in his office. It seemed a long time ago. He had listened patiently to her for four hours. She thought of the warmth in his voice when he had said to her, after she had finished talking, \"Now you're a pupil of this school.\" She loved Mr. Kobayashi even more than she had then. And she was determined to work for him and do anything she could to help him. When she had promised, he smiled delightedly—as usual, showing no embarrassment about his missing teeth. Totto-chan held out her little finger. The headmaster did the same. His little finger looked strong--you could put your faith in it. Totto-chan and the headmaster then made a pledge in the time-honored Japanese way by linking little fingers. The headmaster was smiling. Totto-chan smiled, too, reassured. She was going to be a teacher at Tomoe! What a wonderful thought. \"When I'm a teacher ... ,\" she mused. And these were the things that Totto-chan imagined: not too much study; lots of Sports Days, field kitchens, camping, and walks! The headmaster was delighted. It was hard to imagine Totto-chan grown-up, but he was sure she could be a Tomoe teacher. He thought the Tomoe children would all make good teachers since they were likely to remember what it was like being a child. There at Tomoe, the headmaster and one of his pupils were making a solemn promise about something that lay ten years or more in the future, when everyone was saying it was only a matter of time before American airplanes loaded with bombs appeared in the skies over Japan. Rocky Disappears Lots of soldiers had died, food had become scarce, everyone was living in fear--but summer came as usual. And the sun shone on the nations that were winning as well as on the nations that weren't. Totto-chan had just returned to Tokyo from her uncle's house in Kamakura. There was no camping now at Tomoe and no more lovely visits to hot spring resorts. It seemed as if the children would never be able to enjoy a summer vacation as happy 90

as that one. Totto-chan always spent the summer with her cousins at their house in Kamakura, but this year it had been different. An older boy, a relative who used to tell them scary ghost stories, had been called up and had gone to the war. So there were no more ghost stories. And her uncle who used to tell them such interesting tales about his life in America--they never knew whether they were true or not--was at the front. His name was Shuji Taguchi, and he was a top-ranking cameraman. After serving as bureau chief of Nihon News in New York and as Far East representative of American Metro-News, he was better known as Shu Taguchi. He was Daddy's elder brother, though Daddy had taken his mother's family name in order to perpetuate it. Otherwise Daddy's surname would have been Taguchi, too. Films Uncle Shuji had shot, such as \"The Battle of Rabaul,\" were being shown at movie theaters, but all he sent from the front were his films, so Totto-chan's aunt and cousins were worried about him. War photographers always showed the troops in dangerous positions, so they had to be ahead of the troops to show them advancing. That was whet Totto-chan's grown-up relatives had been saying. Even the beach at Kamakura somehow seemed forlorn that summer. Yat-chan was funny, though, in spite of it all. He was Uncle Shuji's eldest son. Yat-chan was about a year younger than Totto-chan. The children all slept together under one large mosquito net, and before he went to sleep, Yat-chan used to shout \"Long Live the Emperor!\" then fall like a soldier who had been shot and pretend to be dead. He would do it over and over again. The funny thing was that whenever he did this, he invariably walked in his sleep and fell off the porch causing a great fuss. Totto-chan's mother had stayed in Tokyo with Daddy, who had work to do. Now that summer vacation was over, Totto-chan had been brought back to Tokyo by the sister of the boy who used to tell ghost stories. As usual on arriving at home, the first thing Totto-chan did was look for Rocky. But he was nowhere to be found. He wasn't in the house and he wasn't in the garden. Nor was he in the greenhouse where Daddy grew orchids. Totto-chan was worried, since Rocky normally came out to meet her long before she even reached the house. Totto- chan went out of the house and down the road, calling his name, but there was no sign of those beloved eyes, ears, or tail. Totto-chan thought he might have gone back while she was out looking for him, so she hurriedly ran home to see. But he wasn't there. \"Where's Rocky?\" she asked Mother. Mother must have known Totto-chan was running everywhere looking for Rocky, but she didn't say a word. \"Where's Rocky?\" Totto-chan asked again, pulling Mother's skirt. Mother seemed to find it difficult to reply. \"He disappeared,\" she said. Totto-chan refused to believe it. How could he have disappeared? \"When?\" she asked, looking Mother in the face. 91

Mother seemed at a loss for words. \"just after you left for Kamakura,\" she began, sadly. Then she hurriedly continued, \"We looked for him. We went everywhere. And we asked everybody. But we couldn't find him. I've been wondering how to tell you. I'm terribly sorry. Then the truth dawned on Totto-chan. Rocky must have died. \"Mother doesn't want me to be sad,\" she thought, \"but Rocky's dead.\" It was quite clear to Totto-chan. Up till now, no matter how long Totto-chan was gone, Rocky never went far from the house. He always knew she would come back. \"Rocky would never go off like that without telling me,\" she thought to herself. It was a strong conviction. But Totto-chan did not discuss it with Mother. She knew how Mother must feel. \"I wonder where he went,\" was all she said, keeping her eyes lowered. It was all she could do to say that much, and then she ran upstairs to her room. Without Rocky, the house didn't seem like their house at all. When she got to her room, she tried hard not to cry and thought about it once more. She wondered whether she had done anything mean to Rocky—anything that would make him want to leave. \"Never tease animals,\" Mr. Kobayashi always told the children at Tomoe. \"it's cruel to betray animals when they trust you. Don't make a dog beg and then not give it anything. The dog won't trust you any more and might develop a bad nature.\" Totto-chan always obeyed these rules. She had never deceived Rocky. She had done nothing wrong that she could think of. Just then Totto-chan noticed something clinging to the leg of her teddy bear on the floor. She had managed not to cry until then, but when she saw it she burst into tears. It was a little tuft of Rocky's light brown hair. It must have come off when the two of them had rolled about on the floor, playing, the morning she left for Kamakura. With those few little German shepherd hairs clutched in her hand, she cried and cried. Her tears and her sobbing just wouldn't stop. First Yasuaki-chan and now Rocky. Totto-chan had lost another friend. The Tea Party Ryo-chan, the janitor at Tomoe, whom all the children liked so much, was finally called up. He was a grown-up, but they all called him by his childish nickname. Ryo- chan was a sort of guardian angel who always came to the rescue and helped when anyone was in trouble. Ryo-chan could do anything. He never said much, and only smiled, but he always knew just what to do. When Totto-chan fell into the cesspool, it was Ryo-chan who came to her rescue straight away, and washed her off without so much as a grumble. \"Let's give Ryo-chan a rousing, send-off tea party,\" said the headmaster. \"A tea party?\" Green tea is drunk many times during the day in Japan, but it is not associated with entertaining--except ceremonial powdered tea, a different beverage altogether. A \"tea 92

party\" would be something new at Tomoe. But the children liked the idea. They loved doing things they'd never done before. The children didn't know it, but the headmaster had invented a new weld, sawakai (tea party), instead of the usual sobetsukai (farewell party), on purpose. A farewell party sounded too sad, and the older children would understand that it might really be farewell if Ryo-chan got killed and didn't come back. But nobody had ever been to a tea parry before, so they were all excited. After school, Mr. Kobayashi had the children arrange the desks in a circle in the Assembly Hall just as at lunchtime. When they were all sitting in a circle, he gave each one a single thin strip of roasted dried squid to have with their green tea. Even that was a great luxury in those wartime days. Then he sat down next to Ryo-chan and placed a glass before him with a little sake in it. It was a ration obtainable only for those leaving for the front. \"This is the first tea party at Tomoe,\" said the headmaster. \"Let’s all have a good time. If there's anything you'd like to say to Ryo-chan, do so. You can say things to each other, too, not just to Ryo-chan. One by one, standing in the middle.\" It was not only the first time they had ever eaten dried squid at Tomoe, but the first time Ryo-chan had sat down with them, and the first time they had seen Ryo-chan sipping sake. One after the other the children stood up, facing Ryo-chan, and spoke to him. The first children just told him to take care of himself and not get sick. Then Migita, who was in Totto-chan's class, said, \"Next time I go home to the country I'll bring you all back some funeral dumplings.\" Everyone laughed. It was well over a year since Migita first told them about the dumplings he had once had at a funeral and how good they were. Whenever the opportunity arose, he promised to bring them some, but he never did it. When the headmaster heard Migita mention funeral dumplings, it gave him quite a start. Normally it would have been considered bad luck to mention funeral dumplings at such a time. But Migita said it so innocently, just wanting to share with his friends something that tasted so good, that the head-master laughed with the others. Ryo- chan laughed heartily, too. After all, Migita had been telling him for ages that he would bring him some. Then Oe got up and promised Ryo-chan that he was going to become the best horticulturist in Japan. Oe was the son of the proprietor of an enormous nursery garden in Todoroki. Keiko Aoki got up next and said nothing. She just giggled shyly, as usual, and bowed, and went back to her seat. Whereupon Totto-chan rushed forward and said for her, \"The chickens at Keiko-chan's can fly! I saw them the other day!\" Then Amadera spoke. \"If you find any injured cats or dogs,\" he said, \"bring them to me and I’ll fix them up. 93

Takahashi was so small he crawled under his desk to get to the center of the circle and was there as quick as a wink. He said in a cheerful voice, \"Thank you Ryo-chan. Thank you forever thing. For all sorts of things.\" Aiko Saisho stood up next. She said, \"Ryo-chan, thank you for bandaging me up that time I fell down. I’ll never forget.\" Aiko Saisho's great-uncle was the famous Admiral Togo of the Russo-Japanes War, and Atsuko Saisho, another relative of hers, was a celebrated poetess at Emperor Meiji's court. But Aiko never mentioned them. Miyo-chan, the headmaster's daughter, knew Ryo-chan the best. Her eyes were full of tears. \"Take care of yourself, won't you, Ryo-chan. Let's write to each other. Totto-chan had so many things she wanted to say she didn't know where to begin. So she just said, \"Even though you're gone, Ryo-chan, we'll have a tea party every day.” The headmaster laughed, and so did Ryo-chan. All the children laughed, too, even Totto-chan herself. But Totto-chan's words came true the very next day. Whenever there was time the children would form a group and play \"tea party.\" Instead of dried squid, they would suck things like tree bark, and they sipped glasses of water instead of tea, sometimes pretending it was sake. Someone would say, “I’ll bring you some funeral dumplings,\" and they'd all laugh. Then they'd talk and tell each other their thoughts. Even though there wasn't anything to eat, the \"tea parties\" were fun. The \"tea party\" was a wonderful farewell gift that Ryo-chan left the children. And although none of them had the faintest idea then, it was in fact the last game they were to play at Tomoe before the children parted and went their separate ways. Ryo-chan went off on the Toyoko train. His departure coincided with the arrival of the American airplanes. They finally appeared in the skies above Tokyo and began dropping bombs every day. Sayonara, Sayonara! Tomoe burned down. It happened at night. Miyo-chan, her sister Misa-chan, and their mother—who all lived in the house adjoining the school--fled to the Tomoe farm by the pond at Kuhonbutsu Temple and were safe. Lots of incendiary bombs dropped by the B29 bombers fell on the railroad cars that served as schoolrooms. The school that had been the headmaster's dream was enveloped in flames. Instead of the sounds he loved so much of children laughing and children singing, the school was collapsing with a fearful noise. The fire, impossible to quench, burned it down to the ground. Fires blared up all over Jiyugaoka. In the midst of it all, the headmaster stood in the road and watched Tomoe burn. He was dressed, as usual, in his rather shabby black three-piece suit. He stood with both hands in his jacket pockets. 94

\"What kind of school shall we build next?\" he asked his university-student son Tomoe, who stood beside him. Tomoe listened to him dumbfounded. Mr. Kobayashi's love for children and his passion for teaching were stronger than the flames now enveloping the school. The headmaster was cheerful. Totto-chan was lying down in a crowded evacuation train, squeezed in amongst adults. The train was headed northeast. As she looked out of the window at the darkness outside, she thought of the headmaster's parting words, \"We'll meet again!\" and the words he used to say to her time and time again, \"You're really a good girl, you know.\" She didn't want to forget those words. Safe in the thought that soon she would see Mr. Kobayashi again, she fell asleep. The train rumbled along in the darkness with its load of anxious passengers. 95

POSTSCRIPT To write about the school called Tomoe and Sosaku Kobayashi, the man who founded and ran it are the things I have most wanted to do for a long time. I have invented none of the episodes. They are all events that really happened and, thankfully, I have been able to remember quite a few of them. Besides wanting to write them down, I have been anxious to make amends for a broken pledge. As I have described in one of the chapters, as a child I made a solemn promise to Mr. Kobayashi that I would teach at Tomoe when I grew up. However, it was a promise I was not able to fulfill. Instead I have tried to reveal, to as many people as possible, what sort of man Mr. Kobayashi was, his great love for children, and how he set about educating them. Mr. Kobayashi died in 1963. If he were alive today there would be much more he could have told me. Even as I write I realize how many episodes that just seem happy childhood memories to me were, in fact, activities carefully thought out by him to achieve certain results. \"So that's what Mr. Kobayashi must have had in mind,\" I find myself thinking. Or, \"Fancy him even thinking about that.\" With each discovery I make, I am amazed-and deeply moved and grateful. In my own case, I find it impossible to assess how much I have been sustained by the way he used to keep saying to me, \"You're really a good girl, you know.\" Had I not entered Tomoe and had I never met Mr. Kobayashi, I would probably have been labeled \"a bad girl,\" becoming complex-ridden and confused. Tomoe was destroyed by fire in the Tokyo air raids in 1945. Mr. Kobayashi had built the school with his own money, so reestablishing it took time. After the war, he started a kindergarten on the old site, while helping to establish what is now the Child Education Department of Kunitachi College of Music. He also taught eurythmics there and assisted in the establishment of Kunitachi Elementary School. He died, at the age of sixty-nine, before he could set up his ideal school once more. Tomoe Gakuen was in southwest Tokyo, a three-minute walk from Jiyugaoka Station on the Toyoko Line. The site is now occupied by the Peacock super-market and parking lot. I went there the other day out of sheer nostalgia, although I knew nothing was left of the school or its grounds. I drove slowly past the parking lot, where the railroad-car classrooms and playground used to be. The man in charge of the packing lot saw my car and called out, \"You can't come in, you can't come in. We're full!\" \"I don't want to park,\" I felt like saying, “I’m just evoking memories.” But he would not have understood, so I went on. But a great sadness came over me and tears rolled down my cheeks as I sped away. I am sure all over the world there are fine educators - people with high ideals and a great love for children--who dream of setting up ideal schools. And I know how difficult it must be to realize this dream. It took Mr. Kobayashi years and years of study before starting Tomoe in 1937 and it burned down in 1945, so its existence was very brief. 96

I like to believe that the period I was there when Mr. Kobayashi's enthusiasm was at its height and his schemes in full flower. But when I think how many children could have-come under his care had there been no war, I am saddened at the waste. I have tried to describe Mr. Kobayashi's educational methods in this book. He believed all children are born with an innate good nature, which can be easily damaged by their environment and the wrong adult influences. His aim was to uncover their \"good nature\" and develop it, so that the children would grow into people with individuality. Mr. Kobayashi valued naturalness and wanted to let children's characters develop as naturally as possible. He loved nature, too. His younger daughter, Miyo-chan, told me her father used to take her for walks when she was small, saying, “Let's go and look for the rhythms in nature.\" He would lead her to a large tree and show her how the leaves and branches swayed in the breeze; he would point out the relationship between the leaves, the branches, and the trunk; and how the swaying of the leaves differed according to whether the wind was strong or weak. They would stand still and observe things like that, and if there was no wind, they would wait patiently, with upturned faces, for the slightest zephyr. They observed not only the wind, but rivers, too. They used to go to the nearby Tama River and watch the water flowing. They never tired of doing things like that, she told me. Readers may wonder how the authorities in war time Japan allowed such an unconventional elementary school to exist, where studies were carried out in such an atmosphere of freedom. Mr. Kobayashi hated publicity, and even before the war did not allow photographs of the school or any publicity about its unconventionality. That may have been one reason this small school of under fifty pupils escaped notice and managed to continue. Another was that Mr. Kobayashi was highly regarded at the Ministry of Education as an educator of children. Every November third--the day of those wonderful Sports Days of fond memory--the pupils of Tomoe, regardless of when they graduated, get together in a room in Kuhonbutsu Temple for a happy reunion. Although we are all in our forties now-- many of us are nearing fifty--and have grown children of our own, we still call each other by our nicknames just as in the old days. These reunions are one of the many happy legacies Mr. Kobayashi left us. It is true that I was expelled from my first elementary school. I do not remember much about that school--my mother told me about the street musicians and the desk. I found it hard to believe I had been expelled. Could I really have been as naughty as all that! However, five years ago I took part in a morning television show in which I was introduced to someone who had known me at that time. She turned out to be the homeroom teacher of the class next to mine. I was dumbfounded at what she told me. \"You were in the room right next to mine,\" she said, \"and when I had to go to the faculty room during class, I usually found you standing in the corridor for some misdemeanor. As I went past, you always stopped me and asked me why you'd been made to stand out there, and what you had done wrong. 'Don't you like street musicians!' you asked me once. I never knew how to deal with you, so finally, even 97

if I wanted to go to the faculty room I would peep out first, and if you were in the corridor I avoided going. Your homeroom teacher often talked about you to me in the faculty room. ‘I wonder why she's like that,' she would say. That's why, in later years, when you started appearing on television, I recognized your name immediately. It was a long time ago, but I remember you distinctly when you were in first grade.\" Was I made to stand outside in the corridor? I hadn't remembered that and was surprised. It was this youthful-looking, gray-haired teacher with a kindly face, who had taken the trouble to come to an early morning television show, who finally convinced me that I really had been expelled. And here I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to my mother for not having told me about it until after my twentieth birthday. \"Do you know why you changed elementary schools?\" she asked me one day. When I said no, she went on, quite nonchalantly, \"It was because you were expelled.\" She might have said at the time, \"What's going to become of you? You've already been expelled from one school. If they expel you from the next, where will you go?\" If Mother had spoken to me like that, how wretched and nervous I would have felt as I entered the gate of Tomoe Gakuen on my first day there. That gate with roots and those railroad-car classrooms would not have seemed nearly so delightful to me. How lucky I was to have a mother like mine. With the war on, only a few photographs were taken at Tomoe. Among them the graduation photographs are the nicest. The graduating class usually had its photograph taken on the steps in front of the Assembly Hall, but when the graduates started lining up with shouts of, \"Come on, get in the picture!\" other children would want to get in it, too, so it is impossible now to tell which class was graduating. We have animated discussions on the subject at our reunions. Mr. Kobayashi never used to say anything on these picture-taking occasions. Perhaps he thought it was better to have a lively photograph of everyone in the school than a formal graduation picture. Looking at them now, these pictures are very representative of Tomoe. There is much more I could have written about Tomoe. But I shall be content if I have made people realize how even a little girl like Totto-chan, given the right kind of adult influence, can become a person who is able to get along with others. I am quite sure that if there were schools now like Tomoe, there would be less of the violence we hear so much of today and fewer school dropouts. At Tomoe nobody wanted to go home when school was over. And in the morning we could hardly wait to get there. It was that kind of school. Sosaku Kobayashi, the man who had the inspiration and vision to set up this wonderful school, was born on June 18, 1893, in the country northwest of Tokyo. Nature and music were his passions, and as a child he would stand on the bank of the river near his home, with Mount Haruna in the distance, and pretend the gushing waters were an orchestra, which he would \"conduct.\" 98

He was the youngest son of six children in a rather poor farming family and had to work as an assistant school teacher after an elementary education. To obtain the necessary certificate to do it, however, was quite a feat for a boy that age, and it showed exceptional talent. Soon he got a position at an elementary school in Tokyo, and he combined teaching with music studies, which finally enabled him to carry out his cherished ambition and enter the Music Education Department of Japan's foremost conservatory of music--now the Tokyo University of Fine Arts and Music. On graduation, he became music instructor at Seikei Elementary School, founded by Haruji Nakamura, a wonderful man who believed a child's elementary education was of the utmost importance. He kept classes small and advocated a sufficiently free curriculum to bring out the child's individuality and promote self-respect. Study was done in the mornings. Afternoons were devoted to walks, plant collecting, sketching, singing, and listening to discourses by the headmaster. Mr. Kobayashi was greatly influenced by his methods and later instituted a similar kind of curriculum at Tomoe. While teaching music there, Mr. Kobayashi wrote a children's operetta for the students to perform. The operetta impressed the industrialist Baron Iwasaki, whose family founded the giant business enterprise Mitsubishi. Baron Iwasaki was a patron of the arts--helping Koscak Yamada, doyen of Japanese composers, as well as giving financial support to the school. The baron offered to send Mr. Kobayashi to Europe to study educational methods. Mr. Kobayashi spent two years in Europe, from 1922 to 1924, visiting schools and studying eurythmics with Emile Jaques-Dalcroze in Paris. On his return, he established Seijo Kindergarten with another man. Mr. Kobayashi used to tell the kindergarten teachers not to try and fit the children into preconceived molds. \"Leave them to nature,\" he would say. \"Don't cramp their ambitions. Their dreams are bigger than yours.\" There had never been a kindergarten like it in Japan. In 1930, Mr. Kobayashi set off for Europe for a further year of study with Dalcroze, traveling around and making observations, and decided to start his own school on returning to Japan. Besides starting Tomoe Gakuen in 1937, he also established the Japan Eurythmics Association. Most people remember him as the man who introduced eurythmics to Japan and for his work in connection with Kunitachi College of Music after the war. There are very few of us left who directly experienced his methods of teaching, and it is a tragedy that he died before he was able to establish another school like Tomoe. Even as it burned, he was already envisaging a better school. \"What kind of school shall we build next!\" he asked, in high spirits, undaunted by the commotion around him. When I began writing this book, I was amazed to find that the producer of \"Tetsuko's Room,\" my daily television interview program--a producer I had worked with for years-- had been doing research on Mr. Kobayashi for a decade. He had never met the educator, but his interest was aroused by a woman who once played the piano for children's eurythmics classes. \"Children don't walk like that, you know, Mr. Kobayashi had said, correcting her tempo, when she first began. Here was a man who was so attuned to children that he knew how they breathed and how they 99